Vehicularly Challenged - Part 2

Continued from previous post ...

Fortunately, I am a two vehicle household. Sure, the Saab is out of action, but I remembered the yellow Ferrari and decided not to sweat the small stuff. I would cheerfully make do with the motorbike.

Being back on the bike full time wasn't so bad. I was actually rather enjoying it, although I quickly realised that I'd gone a bit soft on my 2 month holiday. Just as my bum was starting to toughen up again, disaster struck. I came home late from work one night. My bike was still chained to the post where I'd left it that morning, but there were some differences.

I'd left it mounted firmly on the centre stand. Now it was off the stand and leaning precariously against the post with a nice new crop of scratches down the side of both bike and post. My first thought was that it had been hit by a car, but there didn't seem to be any damage on the other side of the bike, and the centre stand was neatly folded away. Then I noticed that the fuel line was on and the switch was in the run position. Someone had been messing with my bike. Presumably the same someone who messed with my Saab's number plates. Now I think a mere piking is too good for them. I want to chain their feet to the parked Saab and their hands to the bike, then slowly ride away.

But I can't ride away. On further investigation I find that the bike is also in fourth gear and won't start. It would appear that in their inept efforts to kick it over, in gear and without a key, the mindless vandals have buggered up the starter. I'm stranded, on a perfectly flat road in the middle of the night, dressed in office attire and with a heavy backpack. Home is a couple of kilometres away and uphill. I am stuffed.

Just at that moment, a middle aged and enormously overweight woman drives into the carpark to drop some old clothes in a donation bin. She sees me struggling with the bike and waddles over. "You need a hand?"

"Someone's been messing with it. They couldn't steal it, but they tried to kick it over in gear. Now it won't kick."

"Do you want me to give you a push?"

I looked at this woman, trying to hide my skepticism. Even if she could push the bike far and fast enough for me to clutch start it, I figured there was a fair chance she would have a heart attack and drop dead on the spot. I weighed up the consequences. I figured I could leave the bike running while I administered CPR. "Would you mind?"

She was game, hunkered down and shoved off. I could hear her breathing through my helmet. Slightly panicked I dropped the bike into gear and it locked up, dead.

I cursed under my breath while she tried to catch hers. I gave it the kicker another couple of pointless tries while my saviour puffed and clutched at her chest. "It's okay," I soothed. "Thanks anyway."

"Do you have someone you can call?" She gasped.

"Not really," I admitted. "I'll just have to call roadside assistance and wait for them to show up." It was after 11 pm and we both knew this was not a happy situation. I gave her one last critical look. Maybe I could push the bike and she could clutch it. I thought it over for a moment and realised that even if the bike held up under her weight, I might not. There was actually a fair chance that I'd have a heart attack and drop dead on the spot. She was still breathing hard, but appeared, under the streetlight, to be a fairly normal colour. "Would you mind giving me another push?"

To her eternal credit, she gave it another go. I was patient, let her build up momentum, ignored the sounds of dying from over my shoulder until the bike was really moving, then dropped the clutch just as she gave up. It caught, sputtered, choked ... I throttled on frantically and somehow kept it running.

I left the bike in neutral and checked on my new best friend. Like the bike, she was a little shaky but seemed to be running. I thanked her profusely as she staggered back to her car and I waved as she drove off into the night, puffing and sweating. What a woman!

I nursed the bike home and chained it up next to the useless Saab. I turned off the bike and then tried to kick it over immediately. It started hesitantly, but a couple of days later it still won't kick cold. So now I need to spend some money on getting it fixed before I leave it with Nat. In the meantime I can rely on it only if I park exclusively on hills or have someone around to give me a push.

So I went from two vehicle household, to two wheeled household, to my own two feet within a few days, most of which I spent on hold, trying to call various government agencies. They say these things happen in threes, so I'm really hoping nobody attacks my shoes.

Vehicularly Challenged - Part 1

Trivia question: What is the most important part of a car?

There was a time when I would have said "the engine" or possibly "the steering wheel," but I have had an epiphany. A great truth has been revealed to me. The most important part of a car is the number plates. Don't believe me? Well, consider this: if your car doesn't have number plates then no matter what else it has it will sit, immobile, serving no useful purpose except to store a certain amount of fuel and motor oil.

I learned the importance of number plates when my Saab was reduced from stylish mode of transportation to $80,000 tin can by some thief at the local railway station. I came back from work late one night to discover that some friend of humanity had liberated my number plates. I presume that the perpetrator either intends to use them in the commission of a crime, or is some spotty, disaffected youth who get a kick out of making other people's lives difficult. Either way, although I've always had a fairly liberal preference for offender rehabilitation and restitution, I want this guy's head on a pike outside my house as a warning to others.

I drove home and went straight to bed, too frustrated to function. In the morning, I rode my motorcycle to the station, took the train to work and then called the police to report the theft. This simple theft was actually a rather more complicated crime that crosses state and national borders because I live in one state, let's call it "Old North Scotland" and the car is registered to my father in a different state, let's call it "Elizabeth". Furthermore, my father, the registered owner, is in California, USA.

I told the whole sorry story to the Old North Scotland Police Assistance Line. They issued me with an event number and the cheerful news that it is very illegal to drive the car without plates and the fine is enormous. The police suggested that I contact the traffic authority in Old North Scotland and see if they have temporary plates that they could lend me until new ones are sent up from Elizabeth. I called the traffic authority and sat on hold for 20 minutes only to be informed that there's nothing they could do to help me, and I should contact the Elizabethan traffic authority "Bethroads".

So I called Bethroads and sat on hold for another 30 minutes. I explained the situation to a woman who was not unsympathetic, but was also not competent. She consulted her supervisor, while I sat on hold again. Finally she returned and advised me that I needed to get a signed authority from my father, including details such as his address, my address, the plate number and a whole bunch of other stuff. Once they'd received that, and payment, they would be able to post me some new plates.

How long would it take? Well, 7-10 business days to produce the plates and then a further 7-10 days to post them. I choked. A month? I can't drive the car, or sell the car for a month? The same month in which I need to sell the car, move all my worldly goods into storage and move my cats to the other side of the city? I had a sudden vision of the cat strapped to the back of the motorcycle and practically burst into tears.

I emailed Dad at once and he promptly produced, scanned and emailed the required authority document, which I faxed directly to the number supplied. I followed this immediately (well, after another 35 mins on hold) with another phone call to Bethroads to give them my credit card details so they could process the request as quickly as possible.

The phone was answered by a different woman who was both less sympathetic, and less competent than the first. I explained the whole story again for her benefit and she said "I'm going to need to talk to a supervisor about this."

"No!" I shouted. "A supervisor has already been involved and they said I had to supply the authority, which you now have. It's all there."

The Demon of Bethroads gloated down the phone. "Oh no, you need to include a copy of the police report for the file."

"They don't issue written reports in Old North Scotland. They do it all over the phone and give you an event number as your record. The event number is on the authority. It's in bold."

"We need a copy for the file. I'm sure you understand that."

It was now close to lunchtime and I'd spent the whole day on the phone to various government departments, mostly on hold, only to find out that it was going to cost me close to $100 to not drive or sell the car for a month. Strange as it may seem, I wasn't feeling very understanding. I also work for the largest bureaucracy in the southern hemisphere and even in my department we're capable of making a file note to cover unexpected circumstances. Apparently Bethroads doesn't get a lot of tricky ones.

I insisted that I'd supplied everything the supervisor asked for. Bethroads Bertha put me on hold to track down the same supervisor and returned triumphant. "Call the police back," she suggested. "Ask them to fax you a copy."

I called the Old North Scotland Police back and listened to their hold music for a while. I finally spoke to yet another officer and explained the whole situation over again.

"We don't issue reports." She said, puzzled.

"I know. I explained that, but Bethroads insists. They're living in the dark ages down there, what can I do?"

"Well, I could print a copy of the report for you but there's a $68 fee for that."

I choked on my tongue and took a moment to get it back into the speaking position. "For a piece of paper?"

"We don't issue reports. You have the event number. That's your record."

"I know, but I ..."

Because the Old North Scotland Police are actually quite helpful, she put me on hold (again) while she contacted my local police branch and asked them if there was anything they could do to help. I chewed on a pencil, hoping I would die of lead poisoning before the end of the call. She came back on the line and explained that there was really nothing she could do and suggested that I call Bethroads back, give them her phone number and get them to call her to confirm that the event number is a genuine crime report.

I thanked her and rang Bethroads again. I worked my way again through their numbered menu system. I listened again to their on hold messages. I ate another pencil. Finally, I reached yet another new person. I explained the whole story all over again, supplied the number for the Old North Scotland Police officer and suggested that she call to verify the report. She said "Okay, I'll just put you on hold." I waited .... waited ... waited ... realised that she was probably on hold at the other end ... waited ... ate another pencil. She came back on the line and said "That's fine."

"Great! Let me just give you my credit card details."

"Our accounts deparment will have to give you a call back."

"No! I need to do it now. Honestly I can't wait another minute."

"Please hold."

ARRRGGGHHHHH!

To be continued ...

The Yellow Ferrari

I had a strange dream:

I'm standing on a corner in a bleak, dreary street near my workplace. It's a “dream street” that doesn’t exist in the real world. There’s nothing that dingy in my neighbourhood. I have a Ministerial Briefing in my hand - a type of document that I spend a lot of my time working on.

Suddenly, a low-slung, mean-looking, vivid yellow Ferrari rumbled slowly up the street with my Director-General at the wheel. The Director-General is the mega-boss of the whole Department. As far as I know he doesn’t actually own a yellow Ferrari, but let’s just say he could if he wanted one … or six.

He sees me by the side of the road and slows down. I know that he’s stopping because he thinks I'm waiting for him, that the briefing in my hand must urgently need his attention.

I start to panic; he shouldn't be stopping that Ferrari to handle some silly little political drama. I wave him on urgently, trying to communicate that the briefing isn’t really important. He got the message, smiled and roared off in his Ferrari - the brightest and most exciting thing in the world.

I had dinner with my friends Steve and Edmund to celebrate Steve's birthday. Edmund is very interested in dreams, so I always tell him if I’ve had any unusual ones. I was quite impressed with his analysis of this one.

“It’s about what’s really important” he said sagely. A kind of calm comes over him when he’s doing his guru impression. It’s easy to imagine him sitting in the lotus position and wearing a turban. “Maybe you’re the one in the yellow Ferrari, letting go of the small stuff.”

I'm usually a dream analysis skeptic, but I'm happy to embrace this as a message from my unconscious. I could work hard my whole life only to get hit by a bus before I ever have a chance to drive my yellow Ferrari to freedom, or I could, metaphorically, race off into the sunset right now. I thought of Tim at the piano in the America Bar "working" for a living. There's man firmly seated at the wheel of his personal yellow Ferrari.

It was suddenly very clear to me that I don't love my job. I care about my work and I take pride in it, but I'm not passionate about what I do all day. It's research and study and teaching that I babble about to my bored friends, not Ministerial Submissions and performance reporting.

All of my doubts and resistance to leaving my job for a year of foreign adventure collapsed. For the rest of the night Steve, Edmund and I toasted the yellow Ferrari, our new symbol of putting personal fulfilment above mindless career advancement.

Are You a Couple?

I had dinner in a city restaurant recently with my very dear friend Chris. We eat there fairly regularly and have unfailingly amusing and animated conversations. Then we wander around the city for an hour or two, digesting and discussing. This is Chris dressed for work as Christo the Clown.

This time, as we left the restaurant, something very unusual happened. A smiling stranger walked up to us and said "Excuse me, are you a couple?"

He was a big guy and his breath smelled faintly, but not unpleasantly, of mingled legal and illegal drugs. Chris was a little wary, but the guy seemed harmless enough to me. "Pardon?" Chris said.
The guy smiled again. "I saw you guys eating and you just seemed really happy. I wondered if I could ask you a couple of questions."

Chris and I are not a couple, nor have we ever been a couple. However, we must have been feeling quite coupley in that surreal moment because, by unspoken agreement, we decided to play along. "Sure" I said. "What do you want to know?"

The guy introduced himself, and we introduced ourselves. Then he asked me what had first attracted me to Chris. I thought about it for a moment and answered truthfully that when I first met Chris I had been in a relationship with someone else, but that I had been attracted to his confidence and directness. I remembered a comment Chris made at our first meeting, that the meaning of our personal stories is all in how we spin them. So I was attracted to his insight, and his buff street performer's body.

Then the guy turned to Chris and asked him the same question. He paused, then said that when we first met he was struck by how present I was in the moment, and the quality of my attention. He explained that it wasn't until years later during a long meditation that he realised how significant those first moments were, and what a powerful impact I have had on his life.

The guy said his goodbyes and shook our hands. He wandered off into the night, presumably to seek out other couples. Chris and I continued our walk in silence for a moment. "That was really lovely," I said. He agreed.

It really was. Chris is one of my very best friends, but in all the years we've been meeting for dinner and wandering around the city for half the night, we've never talked about what it was that first brought us together and holds us together still. It took a stranger (and they don't come much stranger than this guy) to bring us to that moment of sharing.

So I don't feel remotely guilty for misleading the guy just a little bit. We're not a couple, but we do love each other.

The Sky Is Falling

It's raining in Sydney. This might not seem like an earth-shattering announcement to some of my foreign readers, but after 5 solid years of drought it has come as quite a shock to us. It started yesterday evening and has continued all night.

For most of the night the fat, heavy drops thrummed against the roof tiles and the already sodden ground outside my bedroom window. A film of water covers the road and trickles down the gentle slope outside my front door.

My hard, dry, brown front lawn doesn't know what to do with the onslaught. The water pools in thick, murky, useless puddles while the roots of the grass struggle stupidly to awaken. There's so much water lying on the ground that I can't even smell wet earth. Every minute or so the thunder rolls over my head and rumbles off into the distance. I can hear the occasional car go by, its tyres hissing through the water. These are long forgotten sounds - the sounds of a wet, grey day in perpetually sunny Sydney.

I was awake most of the night, disturbed by the now unfamiliar voice of the storm, and by the damp, almost tropical heat. The sounds of the storm were brought closer by the dense blanket of water, cloud and humidity. Frequent, sporadic bursts of vivid blue/white lighting lit the room like an irregular strobe light, giving frozen motion glimpses into the moist darkness of imagination. I could have closed up the house, turned on the air conditioning and slept peacefully, but I wanted to be part of the strange tropical downpour. I didn't want to miss a moment of its rhythmic, oppressive drama. So I threw back the covers and lay on the sheet, covered with a faint sheen of perspiration and the condensation of a million percent humidity.

I remembered my time in South East Asia ... Thailand and Papua New Guinea. The memories mingled with this sudden monsoon and I could imagine myself in far off lands. I could almost catch the faint, exotic smells of spice and sandstone and dense green foliage. I could almost hear the thousand sounds of a jungle teeming with life in a way that will never come again to this suburban block in a country where it almost never rains.

Audience Participation

Regular readers may be feeling a little disoriented by my new-look, renovated blog. It has been suggested that the minimalist remodelling may be a reaction to being back at work and generally feeling less festive. Actually, I was just sick of the orange.

I confess I was also quietly hoping that the new look might prompt some of you into more active engagement with the blogging experience. It gets lonely here in the blogosphere sometimes. If I didn't have usage statistics I'd think that no-one was reading at all.

I've also started to feel a little inadequate since I noticed that my friend Robyn's Swiss-bashing blog includes multiple comments from her many and apparently enthusiastic friends. Where are all the comments from my friends? Where are my friends?

My competitive instincts are now on fire. Come on team! I know we can do it. I want to see all of your names up on the comments list asap. So ...

Let's get commenting!

I think we've made a strong start with a guest posting from my Dad, but I know we can do so much better. It's easy.

First pick a post that you particuarly like, or find interesting, or have an opinion about. Look at the bottom of any post and you'll see a little link that says:

"0 COMMENTS."

Theoretically it could say "5 COMMENTS" or "500 COMMENTS". Those are the kind of numbers we're aiming for team!

Click on the link.

Or it might look like this. Click on "Post a Comment".

A pop-up window will appear. If you haven't already done so, you might need to get a Blogger ID. Just follow the prompts. Then enter your witty, insightful comment in the text box.

Once you've entered your comment, scroll down to the bottom of the window and click "Publish Your Comment". You can "Preview" before posting if you want to review your comment.

Your comment will then be submitted for moderation by a higher power - me. Don't take it personally, it's actually a strategy to avoid blog spam. I don't have the power to change your comments, only to approve them, or reject them if I'm feeling tetchy.

If you need more information on how to post a comment click here.

Remember you can also comment in response to other people's comments. Ideally, we'll end up with something bordering on a conversation. This blog is for me too. I'll get out of it what you put into it.

Adventures through other eyes - a father's perspective

There comes a time when the sufferee gets to talk about their pain and tell it like it really was. My time is here.

I'm not sure what Heather expected from her initial sojourn but I suspect the reality wasn't quite what she anticipated. She fit in comfortably and was, in equal measures, both charmed and charming. From my perspective, after 6 weeks of being double teamed by two delightful, but manipulative, women it's time for a little R&R before the next round.

Heather and Patricia hit it off better than I had ever expected or hoped they would, basically growing the relationship that started in Australia, moved to Texas and continued (expensively) on through Europe almost 3 years ago. I suspected then that this mere male would not stand up to a concerted onslaught – how right I was!

How someone can whine about the cold when faced with the grandeur of the Sierras or the lack of a view from the clouded-in peaks of the Grapevine range heading in to Los Angeles for the SECOND cruise in a month is beyond me, but this pair managed it. They dictated where and when we ate, what we saw on TV, what we bought and from where and they reveled in their conspiracy.

Heather settled quickly into the lifestyle of the rich and famous that she aspires to, arising at noon to plan the next adventure or to pick over the spoils of the last shopping spree they made. I'm not sure who was the worse influence but they fed off each other and I was the one consumed.

I've enjoyed the time getting reacquainted and even tolerated losing all rights to an opinion for 6 weeks straight.

For any of you macho types reading this that question my ability to maintain a place as Lord of the Manor, I make this offer: I will lend you my Princesses for a decade or two to try for yourself. Oh, and if you're not a millionaire … don't bother.

Geoff

Matt Tonks

On Thursday night I went to see Matt Tonks perform in a pub (bar) near my workplace. There is a lot of good music in Sydney, and a number of good singer/songwriters, but I have a particular soft spot for Matt.

Once upon a time, for a long time, part of my job involved booking musicians to perform at a TAFE College. With apologies to all the other fine and talented folks who played for us, Matt was always my favourite. I lost track of him for a while after I left the college, but we vaguely kept up on each other's news through mutual acquaintances. One day I googled him to see what he was up to, found his website www.matttonks.com.au and resumed communication.

While I wasn't looking Matt has deservedly outclassed his days on my campus. He was always too good for us really. He's been off winning music awards, recording albums and generally being a proper grown-up musician.

You can hear some of Matt's music on his website, or myspace page. It's an interesting mix of straight folk-rock and some more avante-guard stuff with unusual time signatures. On stage, he makes live recordings through the mike in his guitar of the instruments, and his voice, then loops them to build a really rich, full sound. It's fascinating to see and hear the construction of the song.




Matt has also partnered up with Syd Green who plays drums and slide guitar on stage, and apparently has innumerable additional musical skills. I don't know Syd very well, we've only met a couple of times at gigs, but he makes a powerful impression and I already like him. I try not to pollute my blog with hyperbole, but Syd strikes me as a man with a beautiful soul. I don't think I've ever seen a drummer who is more generously attuned to his front man. He is riveting to watch and periodically breaks out into a broad, spontaneous smile. I'm glad to have met him.



I offered to photoshop out the sweat from this photograph but Matt, with typical self-deprecation, declined the cosmetic enhancement. He said "Just say we're a hard-working band."

They are.

I encourage all Sydney based readers to pick up the album Synaesthesia and watch the website. Get along to a gig sometime very soon. Members of my international audience who would like to hear more of Matt's music can request that I bring them copies of his album when I am next on your continent. Alternatively those based in the US can pick up the album on CDUniverse.com.

Real Life

Reality reasserted itself after only a few days back in Australia. One of its most obvious manifestations was my return on Monday morning to my place of employment. Behind this beautiful, heritage listed sandstone facade lurks an incongruous plasterboard warren of security doors, office windows with those horizontal blinds from doctor's waiting rooms, and endless blue public service cubicles.

I wandered in at 8:30 am, still feeling a little disoriented. I sat and chatted with my boss for a while and she told me that work had been fairly quiet and I should be able to ease back into the swing of a gentle week - A GREAT BIG LIE! Instead, day one was characterised by widespread panic within my business area, although I still haven't quite figured out why. Several times I found myself gazing into the flourescent light banks and thinking "A week ago I was on a cruise."

When I finally staggered out of the office at 6:30 pm I paused to say goodbye to my boss. "We haven't had a day like this for months" she said. "I think it's you." Let me state this for the record: if the Department considers that its best interests lie in paying me to swan about on the other side of the world, then I am more than happy to serve as called.

Over the week I have been progressively reassimilated into the old routine, to the point where I am once again thinking about work much of the time ... on the train, in the shower and in bed. I even brought work home to do over the weekend. Only once today did I catch myself staring dreamily into the memories of recent adventures. I have been restored to my proper place as a tiny, dilligent cog in a vast and mysterious machine.

There's no place like home ...

I have decided that blogging is entirely too convenient and too much fun to stop doing it just because I no longer have anything interesting to say. So I intend to maintain my little online journal for the edification of friends and family, near and far.

My first night back in Sydney was delightful, partly because I was faintly euphoric with exhaustion. Several dear and much missed friends dropped by and I spent several hours babbling away about my new friends on the other side of the world. By the way, don't ever do that. Telling the old friends that you're happy to see about the new friends that you're sorry to leave just messes with your head. Even the cats seemed pleased to see me, at least they did once Skid stopped hiding behind my suitcase.

I walked into my bedroom and felt a sudden warm swell of satisfaction. Finally, I would sleep again in my own bed, in my own room, in my own little house. The pleasure was short lived. I woke at 6 am the following morning with a start, totally disoriented. There's no place like home.

Leaving on a Jetplane

Nearly six weeks has slipped away like it was nearly six days and my very personal adventure has finally resolved itself into the shared narrative of all such visits: I came, I saw, I left.

I am now back in Sydney, reunited with my cats and my old friends. Of course, the trip was horrible. The trip is always horrible.

It's bad enough that I never sleep on planes, even on nice planes. But this was a cramped and crowded cheapo flight with two stopovers of several hours in which my luggage and I changed planes and went insane with sleep deprivation.

On the longest leg, close to 11 hours in the air, I was sitting next to a very nice, very large man from California. We exchanged vague pleasantries and settled in to carefully ignoring each other. About 20 mins after take off the entertainment system was activited. For a few minutes my neighbour and I struggled silently with the technology. I couldn't get any sound out of my headphones at all, and I could hear his blaring away at top volume as he struggled vainly to change the channel. After a couple of minutes of this we felt momentarily united by the supremely crap entertainment facitilities and exchanged a few friendly cynicisms.

We gave up on the movies and I decided to read instead. So I pressed the button to turn on my reading light ... and his light came on. Momentarily bewildered, I turned it off, and turned it on again. Understanding dawned on us both. He pushed his light button. My light came on. Oh no! Our wires were literally crossed. He had control of my entertainment system. I had control of his. Two strangers squashed miserably into sardine class now have to co-operate. It was a long flight.

The rest of the trip passed in a haze of tiny, bleary, out of focus movies. By the time we arrived in Sydney my eyes were so dehydrated and gritty that I suspect my eyeballs might have wandered out onto the wing for part of the flight.

Customs spat me out after another hour or so of pointless waiting and Anne ferried my tired body and empty head back to my place. I was home, and so exhausted that I felt more desperately in need of a holiday than I was when I left.

Autos and Architects

On the roads of Fresno, and indeed much of the United States of America, rumbles the relentless roar of a surprising number of really, really big trucks. We have some big four-wheel drives in Australia too, but even the most enormous among them is like an iron filing compared with these rolling steelworks.

This one comes all the way up to the shoulder on Marcus. I guess they carry a stepladder in the tray so they can climb in and out.


Some truck owners, not content to drive something merely massive, still feel the need to further raise the cabin. This is actually legal.


As if to make up for the excessive solidity of their cars, the people of California build their houses out of cardboard. This work-in-progress was erected in about five minutes with a few sheets of man-made wood and a glue gun.


Having bound the abode together with old chewing gum, the builders then render it in cement and lay turf so that it ends up looking as substantial as this.

It's a good thing they don't have earthquakes in California ... oh, wait a minute ...

Wax on, Wax off

Killing time in San Francisco we decided to explore the wax museum. Now that I'm a veteran cruiser I was terribly excited by the first exhibit. This could have been me! If only there had been someone dangling from the front of the ship with a camera to capture my moment as Queen of the Paradise.


I liked the wax museum. I found the historical displays interesting and educational, athough I was more than a little baffled by some of the decisions the curators made about the juxtaposition of the figures from the entertainment world. Eminem and Shirley Temple side by side. I kept expecting him to come to life, call her "li'l bitch" and slip her a packet of Marlboros.

I had a sudden pang of homesickness at the Wizard of Oz display. "There's no place like home. There's no place like home."

"And you, Scarecrow, I'll miss most of all."

In the chamber of horrors we came across my favourite exhibit ... the electric chair. It certainly gives one hell of a shock, as you can see from Patricia's experience below.

The shock apparently didn't have quite the same effect on me. History has recorded two enigmatic smiles that have caused onlookers to puzzle over the question "What is she thinking?"

This is the other one.

San Francisco Pier

In the last few days of my stay we made a second pilgrimage to San Francisco via the holy factory outlet stores where I blew my remaining holiday budget on cut price clothing.

Actually, the two days of heavy duty shopping was incredibly efficient, because it was while we were buying our new matching sweaters that Patricia and I hit on the idea of a communal wardrobe. By sharing clothes we double our selection, halve our costs and increase our retail satisfaction by several hundred percent. Dad had a hard time grasping the significance of this revelation, but he might have just been bitter because Patricia was wearing his jacket at the time.

In addition to putting burn marks on our credit cards, Patricia and I spent the day wandering around Piers 39 and 41. We made friends with a couple of street performers.


And a few marine mammals. In the shopping frenzy I came perilously close to buying a backpack that looks like a sea otter wearing a parachute harness. Somehow I managed to resist temptation by taking vicarious pleasure in Patricia's purchase of sea otter socks and wood carving.

The sea lions were great fun, lazing around and blowing snot at the tourists. They're like damp furry delinquents. I'm told that shortly before our visit, several of them went on a bender, boarded and capsized a sailing boat. I could have sworn I saw a few of them high fiving each other when we walked past.

I also had a sudden rush of homesickness when I peered into this jewellers window. Fancy finding thong (flip-flop) jewellery in San Francisco of all places. Come on Sydney! They're stealing our material.

Signs of the Times

On one of my first days in Fresno I saw a large sign that read "Free Dirt" posted on a house fence. That was just the start of the strange signs for even stranger products that I encountered during my visit.

This one baffled me until I discovered that this is reverse advertising. They're actually offering low price smog minimisation, not the smog itself.

This next one I like a lot. In Fresno, you can just pop out for a Mexican dinner and a sword.

Essence of California. Aging hippy distributing free hugs to passers by. I secretly wanted one but was too Australian and uptight.

Ensenada. Self-explanatory.

San Francisco. Before you look at the close up of the sign below, please note that there is plainly not a bench anywhere in this first picture.

I try to understand, but my head hurts.

"Workaholic" is Only a Word

Like all travellers, I feel somehow compelled to produce endless photographs of myself with my arm around people that you don’t know and don’t care about. But hey, it’s my blog and I can be as self-absorbed as I like. These two charming Fresnans are distinguished by both being Brazilian, and by working harder than almost anyone I know – including me.

This is Jorge (in my mind forever “Gorgeous Jorge”). He’s the sweetest, most adorable bartender who has ever moved heaven and earth to satisfy a whim for midnight chocolate mousse. He works incredibly long hours, seven days a week, charms all the customers and still finds enough hours in the gym to maintain a body befitting a pagan fertility god. One flash of Jorge’s 28 pack abdomen would guarantee a fruitful harvest for any village. With his gentle and generous temperament, his Herculean work ethic, his magnificent physique and his sexy Brazilian accent Jorge might just be the perfect man. Sigh.



Then there's Vera. She’s a waitress in Samba, the same Brazilian nightspot / restaurant where Jorge runs the bar. Just like Jorge, she doesn’t waste her scarce leisure time on anything as frivolous as leisure. Instead she cleans people’s houses, including ours. She was the second Fresnan I met when I arrived here and is as delightful as she is hard working.


I think there’s a lesson here for all of us, and an answer to those of you who question the way I load up my days and nights. It’s all a matter of perspective. You might call me a crazy workaholic, but in the company of these two charming young people I’m merely demonstrating a natural, even average, level of enthusiasm. I have found my people!

I’m now considering moving to Brazil with Jorge and Vera to start a commune for the inherently industrious. Interested overachievers may submit applications, including a resume of not less than 12 pages.

The America Bar

The centre of the ship on our cruise was always in the America Bar with Tim and the gang.

One of the highlights for me was the "Name That Tune" competition which I won for the second time, this time with a record-breaking score of 23 out of 20. Thus proving either that I hadn't really needed Lance the first time, or that at least that I have a good memory. Tim handed me my little plastic piece of ship and said "What's your name little girl?"

I laughed and said "It's Heather."

"Hester!" He said into the microphone. "Congratulations Hester, the winner of Name That Tune."


One of the features of Tim's bar is that everyone starts to feel like it's really their bar. So at any given moment when you look up, you can't be too sure who will be performing. Here Marc shares with Tim and the rest of the audience, his slightly off-key and profoundly off-colour version of Blue Bayou.

A special guest pianist from the audience joins Tim for a jam session.

Same jam, different configuration.

The next time I looked up Tim had disappeared altogether and Marc was doing guest vocals with the guest pianist.

Thanks again Tim for being such a great host and making sure that we all had a good time in the America Bar. We wrote nice things about you on our customer feedback forms, but it never hurts to put these sentiments out into cyberspace. We think you're great, and we hope you'll make it to the reunion cruise as a guest so you can hang out with us full-time.

Cruisers

The best thing about this cruise was the chance to meet and spend some time with my delightful new friends. From the top left they are: Pamela, Margaret, Tim, Patricia, Lisa and Marc.


We were all scheduled for the late dinner sitting and were hanging out in Tim's America Bar on the first night. Patricia and I first started chatting with Pamela and Margaret. They are two friends from San Diego who were on the ship to celebrate Margaret's 30th birthday in style. We took to each other so well that when dinner started we asked the Maitre de to reallocate us to the same table so we could keep talking. In a striking demonstration of Paradise hospitality, he obliged.

Pamela and Margaret are two smart and impressive women who really sucked the marrow out of the cruise. From the birthday cake, through the Sombrero, all the way to the sunglasses and Bloody Mary breakfast they were fantastic fun.

We also met Lisa and Marc on that first night in the America Bar, but it wasn't until the following night that we really had a chance to bond with them. We'd wandered past them on Santa Catalina Island just as they were about to brave the cold to go diving. I was so jealous that I interrogated them extensively in the bar later. So, in our continuing mission to make life difficult for the Maitre de, Patricia and I arranged to hop tables again and joined Marc and Lisa for dinner.

On Wednesday, while Margaret and Pamela were conserving their strength for the impending birthday, Patricia and I hooked up with Lisa and Marc again for the excursion to Ensenada.

Over the course of the day we planned a surprise birthday party for Margaret at midnight. We even ordered a cake and arranged for it to be delivered at 12:01 am.

In Ensenada we bumped into Tim and discovered that it wasn't just Margaret's birthday the following day, but his as well. Because Tim was on duty, his availability for socialising with the guests was profoundly limited, but we still managed to include him at the beginning of the celebrations. Even after he had to retire from the guest floors, Tim was still part of the gang in spirit as we partied on.

We all had such a good time together that we parted with plans for a reunion cruise in the summer. I really hope it works out, because I love these guys.