43 & 44. Pure Blonde and Redback Beer

Pure Blonde
Smoothness 3
Cost 2
Piss-Factor 3
Aftertaste 2
Coolness 2

Redback Beer
Smoothness 4
Cost 3
Piss-Factor 3
Aftertaste 4
Coolness 4

As I’ve said before, the Crows nest area of North Sydney is littered with bars, cafes and restaurants and despite my realisations during Australia Day with regards to alcohol, we found ourselves in the aptly named “Stoned Crow” bar not far from our flat.

We had not been drunk since leaving Scotland and were now getting quite good at enjoying beer and wine for their own sake instead of just drinking them to get wasted. As always the sun was shining and while doing some exploring we happened upon this rather lavish bar. It seemed quite modern and trendy but there were all sorts of people in there from posh couples to big families dressed in shorts and t-shirts so we thought we’d stop in for a drink or two.

The staff were very friendly and welcoming and when I told them I was trying to taste lots of different beers while we were staying in Oz they recommended the above. All in all both were not bad. The Pure Blonde was a definite thirst quencher but otherwise a bit boring. The Redback, however, came across as Australia’s answer to the European weiss beers and it was super tasty. Perhaps not as rich as some of the wheat beers I’m used to drinking at home but the lightness of it suited the 29C day.

42. Australia Day

I really don’t quite know what to make of this public holiday. It’s a bit like St Patrick’s day for the Aussies – lots of partying and drinking but nobody’s really sure why.

Whatever the reasons for this gratuitous day off, it was great fun. The Australians really know how to have a good time and that meant that there were bands playing all over Circular Quay and the Rocks, stalls selling drinks and food, big screen TVs, cafes with their tables and chairs out on the cordoned off roads and tons of people having a good time and waving Australian flags for no real reason. And the best thing (since I’d still not been paid) was that it was all free.

I loved it. It wasn’t long before we were toying with the idea of getting temporary Australian flag tattoos which seemed to be all the rage, but then opted for ice cream instead! We milled through the crowds looking for a focus point for the event but there didn’t really appear to be one. However, we were taken more photos of the ubiquitous Opera House from the opposite side of the Quay and noticed there were throngs of people around it so we went to investigate.

It appeared that Australians love sport even more than they love a party as there was more people at the Opera House than anywhere else and where they enjoying Australia day? No. They were glued to the massive TV screen that had been put up specifically so that people could watch the Australian Tennis Open. In fairness it was one of the finals but it wasn’t even a singles match. It was the women’s doubles and it was a pair from China and a pair from South Africa that were battling it out – not an Australian in sight. None the less the amphitheatre formed by the Opera House steps was bursting with people staring at the screen.

It was getting late in the day so we left there and made our way to the train station. As we walked back something struck me about the day. It was a public holiday, the sun was shining, there was music, there were bars, there were performances and there were people – tons of people. Yet I didn’t see a single drunk, I didn’t see any broken glass, there was no urine running out of side street (even though I didn’t see a single port-a-loo) and there wasn’t even any sun burn!

I couldn’t believe the difference in the attitude of the people in Sydney. They were all having a great time but nobody was out of hand and there was absolutely no evidence of people drinking to excess. Much as I’ve enjoyed more than my fair share of alcohol in Glasgow, it makes me sad to think that getting drunk during a festival or even just because the sun is out is the norm. Perhaps it takes something as severe as a 12,000 mile trip to the other side of the world to see that.

41. Singha Beer

Smoothness 2
Cost 4
Piss-Factor 3
Aftertaste 4
Coolness 3

So far this has been one of the most disappointing beers I’ve drank since leaving the UK. We had been exploring Darling Harbour which is a recently regenerated area of docklands west of the CBD. Millions of dollars have been spent on the area in the last 20 years resulting in derelict land become prime waterfront real estates.

There are loads of areas of interest in this neck of the woods and it’s only about 10 minutes walk from the Harbour Bridge. Any guide book will tell you about the Casino, the Aquarium, the Conference Centre and the Maritime Museum be we were primarily there for the cafes and bars that line the east side of the harbour.

It was a scorcher of a day and our tans were coming along nicely despite factor 30, hats, t-shirts and sun glasses (as is the recommendation of the Australian Government – the only thing we were missing from the “5 Ways to Protect Your Skin” campaign was the umbrellas but I couldn’t bring myself to use one in the sun. It would make me feel too much like I was back in Scotland waiting for the next downpour. Actually, the use of the word “next” implies that there is some let-up in the rain, which there isn’t!).

Anyway, we wandered round the whole harbour and as it reached 1pm and the sun was getting too hot to bare we thought that some lunch and some beer was in order. After much deliberation, it was declared that Thai food was not ideal in this weather but we were enjoying it so much of late that it won hands down against the competition. “I Thai” was the name of where we ended up and the food was absolutely fantastic.

Since leaving home I’d put it out of my head that Thai food is full of coconut milk and oil and, instead was viewing it as a healthy option to Chinese and Indian – which it isn’t really, especially if you are eating tons of red and green curry every week. But that didn’t put me off and to go with the meal I chose Singha Beer which I’d never had before.

I guess I always feel that beers from Asia are always going to be good because they are quite rare at home and if you are drinking them then you are either on a night out where you are flush with cash or you are on holiday. So you can imagine how upset I was when I took my first mouthful and after the initial joy of cold-beer-on-a-hot-day had faded I was left with a bitter and acidic aftertaste – which didn’t go away despite eating Thai Red Curry! However, in its favour it is almost 6% and I had a nice little head buzz as we settled the bill and went off to scour the harbour further.

40. First Day Working in Hornsby Ku-Ging-Gai Hospital

So, at last the waiting was over and I was no longer going to be an unemployed traveller. I was about to join the Australian, tax-paying, work force and although slightly apprehensive, I was really looking forward to getting back into the swing of working. I had phoned the hospital the day before to ask when I was expected to turn up but nobody seemed to know anything. The end result was a receptionist telling me “Just turn up at 8am,” and that appeared to be the end of it.

My alarm went off at 6am and that would have normally pissed me off but in Australia everyone seems to be up at that time. Also the sun was shining again and we had gotten used to the early-to-bed early-to-rise attitude since arriving anyway so it didn’t seem like too much of an issue to get out of my pit.

By 7am I was on the train heading to Hornsby. It’s about 30 minutes on the train but there is a 20 minute walk to the hospital once you reach Hornsby Station so I thought it wise to be a bit early. I didn’t want to cycle as I wasn’t sure about where I could leave it and what the changing rooms would be like (if they did in fact exist). It appeared that nobody cared that I was early since there was no consultant around and no other staff that were interested in showing me the ropes. So I did what any other good doctor would do – I went straight to the staff room and helped myself to some coffee.

Eventually, the consultant appeared and gave us a few moments chat about how the place was run and a couple of pointers on the computer systems, followed by a small tour of the department. I then got wind of an induction session that was happening at 11am so headed off to that with some of the other new-starts. As I’d not had a permanent address until a few days earlier, I’d not received any information regarding the job. Therefore I spent most of the morning following everyone else around since they seemed to know what was going on.

Induction was the same as any other hospital and mainly focused on pay, sick leave, passwords and on-call patterns. However, there were things that I’d never heard of like salary packaging and ADO’s (additional days off). Not only that but when I got the a copy of the rota it showed that I was working from 2pm till midnight for the next 4 days and when I started taking details from patients I realised that the names of all the drugs were different.

Australians tend to use the trade names for drugs and not the generic names. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem but most of the trade names in Australia differed from those in the UK. Can you imagine spending 5 years at university learning about medicines then you spend 5 years prescribing them when all of a sudden the entire formulary is changed to drugs you’ve never heard of? That made for some interesting conversations with the patients.

Once old lady was telling me her cardiac medicines and I kept asking her to repeat them and spell them since I didn’t know what they were. Eventually, she said, “What do you mean you’ve never heard of Cardor?” and I said that Carte d’Or was a make of ice-cream back home and apologised for my lack of Australian drug knowledge.

On the plus side everyone in the Emergency Dept was amazingly friendly including the patients. The lay out was very similar to Accident and Emergency departments I’d worked for in the UK and apart from a few nuances the day to day tasks were identical. It didn’t take long to get into the swing of things and when I looked at my watch it was already approaching midnight.

I couldn’t recall having a single break that day as I walked back to the train station. I’d been in the hospital for 16 hours and was thankful that I could have a long lie in the morning since I wasn’t due back in till 2pm. As I reached the station, I saw a train on the tracks and so sprinted towards the platform. When I got there it looked like a ghost train as there was nobody else around. Eventually a solitary character came out of one of the carriages and called over to me, “There’s no more trains tonight mate.” It was one of the train guards. Apparently there had been bush fires further up the line and the trains had been stopped.

This meant that they were running buses instead and I spent the next 30 minutes waiting for a bus back home which thankfully turned up just before 1am. It took another 45 minutes to get home and this made me resolute that I should be using my bike to commute. All in all it wasn’t a bad first day but it was incredibly long and I was looking forward to the predictability of my 10 hour shifts for the next 12 months.

39. James Boag’s St George Premium Beer

Smoothness 4
Cost 3
Piss-Factor 4
Aftertaste 1
Coolness 3 (5 if you are from England as there is a picture of St George on the front!)

After the last few weeks of fun, flats and furniture, I was my last night as a free man. Tomorrow would be my first day of work at Hornsby hospital. I had no idea what to expect and I wasn’t sure how I’d fit into the Australian system but I was still excited about the prospects of meeting some new people and getting back to work.

As we were running out of funds we were finding it harder to occupy our time. We’d had to stop living the tourist lifestyle as it was proving too expensive and things like the Harbour Bridge walk were just going to have to wait until we had some income to pay for outings like that. This gave me two more reasons to look forward to working – 1. It would occupy a significant amount of my time and 2. it was free!

With the cost of things looming over our every action, we were conscious of every unnecessary penny we were spending. However the temperature had gone from a pleasant 24C the day before to a searing 37C which hampered all aspects of the day’s activity. We decided to spend the evening in the pool cooling down but as we approached the door we noticed a sign stuck to it saying the pool was out of order till further notice.

At that moment we decided that cold beers were in fact a necessity and no longer a luxury so we went straight round to the off-licence and blow $12 on a 4-pack of Boag’s. It was worth it!

Boag’s turned out to be possibly one of the tastiest beers that we’ve ever drank. It’s full of lemon flavour and has very little in the way of aftertaste. It’s now on our list of “must haves” for any future scorching days.

38. Cycle – St Leonards to Manly

I love my bike. It’s like a bullet in comparison to the old mountain bike I was riding back home. Another early morning saw me cruising down Falcon Rd and Military Rd on the way to Manly.

It was a great cycle but I had doubts about how I was going to get back as I motored down an incredibly steep hill towards the Spit Bridge. Once I got over the bridge it seemed like I was continually going uphill until I reached Manly. It made no sense. I was at sea level at the bridge and sea level at Manly Beach yet to get from the bridge to the beach required about 15 minutes of uphill toil.

As I suspected the hill I’d flow down in the way there was murder to climb on the way back. One by one I clicked down the gears until finally I ran out. Not good. Half way up a 2 lane main road with no gears left and failing power in my legs. Stubborn grit saw me up the hill but I didn’t feel to well at the top. Thankfully it was a nice level coast back to the flat but again with a mouthful of mosquitoes and blue bottles.

37. Paddington Market (not Paddy’s Market)

Sydney loves its markets. There run on various days of the week and there are plenty to choose from depending on where you stay. This day we decided to check out the market at Paddington.

It’s located in around a school on Oxford St in Paddington and I had visions of people selling all kinds of bric-a-brac and fresh produce with the customers haggling over the price. It turns out I was quite wrong.

If you are a bloke that doesn’t particularly like shopping with your girlfriend or wife then stay away. There was stall after stall of jewellery, bags, belts, soaps, and dresses. In my humble opinion a man couldn’t find himself in a worse situation. Isla was loving it and as she perused the goods it seemed that she was walking slower and slower. Time began to stand still and as the day wore on the sun got hotter and hotter.

Thankfully, there was a few stalls selling grub and I felt a little better as I was ordering a sausage roll looking pastry. Almost immediately I felt bad again as the vendor explained that they only used natural ingredients, it was gluten free and there was no meat in it! So I felt emasculated once again and went to find Isla while nibbling on my flour free, sugar free, meat free, taste free, environmentally friendly snack.

She’d bought some geranium scented soap and was looking pleased with herself and thankfully she was ready to leave the market. I suggested that we walk back into the city instead of taking the train and this was another mistake as that area of Oxford Road is crammed full of beauticians, shoe shops and women’s clothes shops. So in my efforts to escape the market I’d jumped straight out of the pot and into the fire.

All was not lost thought as we happened upon a nice café where a beer and a plate of nachos made me feel like a man again!

36. Cycle: St Leonards to Hornsby

It was time to break the new bike in. I had no idea what the cycle out to Hornsby was going to be like and since I was planning to do it every day I thought it best to check out the route.

I got up at 6am ahead of any Pacific Highway traffic and jumped on the bike. It was a bit of a trauma to begin with as I’d never used SPD pedals before and I had visions of ending up over the handle bars with the bike still attached to my feet. For about the first mile every set of traffic lights was a nightmare as I couldn’t get my shoes out of the pedals quick enough to stop me falling over when the lights went red. It’s very embarrassing lying at the side of the road with a bike attached to you, flapping about like a goldfish that’s just jumped out of the bowl. Green was just as bad as I found it impossible to get the shoes to reattach whenever I set of again.

Finally, I mastered the pedals, even though I ended up with bleeding shins and a battered ego, and focused on the trip ahead.

When I was buying my bike I mentioned that I was going to be commuting to Hornsby and the bloke told me there was some great riding up that way. “And what’s the cycle up to Hornsby like?” I asked.

“Aw mate, that part’s a bit shit cause it’s uphill all the way.” He said laughing, “Don’t worry though, it’s downhill all the way home!”

How right he was. 18km of uphill slog that took me 55 minutes, a full bottle of water and one stop for a false alarm throw-up. As I freewheeled into the hospital car park several thoughts were going through my mind (as was the saddle). Was I going to be able to do this every day? Was this the best way to get fit? Was traffic going to be worse? Had I blown all this money on a bit of kit that I was never going to use again?

None of those questions stayed with me that long though, because as soon as I got back on Pacific Highway, I realised that it had all been worth while. Downhill all the way home like the man said. The speedometer on the cross bar was reading 55.5km/h at one point and I wished I’d always had a road bike. It was exhilarating. 35 minutes later I was back at the flat with a massive grin on my face and about 20 flies in my teeth.

33, 34 and 35. New South Wales Medical Board, Tax File Numbers and Palandri Margaret River 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon

Oh where do I begin this story? Honestly, I feel like an extra in Faulty Towers or One Foot in the Grave. Nothing ever goes smoothly; there’s always a hitch or a problem that needs tackling in even the simplest of ventures. Not that I’m blaming other people as I’m positive that I often contribute to the disasters I come across.

So what was I saying? Oh yes, if you come to Australia to work as a doctor you have to jump through all the usual hoops for your visa and your work requirements but thanks to the likes of Harold Shipman and Dr Kvorkian we have to send all our original documentation to an international verification company in Philadelphia, USA to check that we are who we say we are and that our certificates are real.

I don’t really have a problem with this, after all if I was needing medical care I’d want to know that the person that was treating me was legitimate and not some mental case with a fake degree like the one that Dr Nick has in “The Simpsons” (his comes from “Upstairs Hollywood Medical School” in case you are interested).

Speaking of mental cases, the NSW Medical Board is located in the Gladesville Mental Hospital. Can you believe it? Not “Gladesville Psychiatric Unit”, not “Gladesville Hospital for Psychiatric Disorders”, but Gladesville Mental Hospital in bold lettering on the sign at the entrance to the grounds. I’m not the most PC person in the world but surely that’s not the wording that people use nowadays to describe nut jobs.

The name certainly suits the place though because when I first went to there I wondered for ages through the “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” grounds trying to find the building that the Board were located in.

You see after filling in all the bumf and crossing t’s and dotting i’s in the UK, I still had to turn up to the Board in person once I’d arrived in the country and register. I thought that it was a bit of a formality and so I mosied over there about 2 weeks before I was due to start working to pick up my Registration Certificate. As I’d gone through an agency to get my job I’d assumed that everything had been done for me. Not only that but I’d sent all my official paperwork to the States and they’d said everything was fine and they were going to notify the appropriate Australian authorities.

You can imagine my chagrin when, after a 90 minute wait in the small Board building, the bloke behind the counter said, “I need to see your originals mate”.

WHAT? My originals were in boxes stored in my parents’ garage back in Scotland. Not only that but they were on holiday in Spain and wouldn’t be back until 3 days before I was due to start working!

I explained this to the chap and he fetched my file which had copies of everything from the verification company saying that they had seen the originals and they were legitimate. I couldn’t understand why he needed to see everything again. I realise that I should have had the good foresight to have brought everything with me just in case but when I asked why he said, “Cause I need some proof that you are who you say you are.” This was fair enough but I thought my passport and visa would have sufficed. Apparently not. Then, as an afterthought then he came out with a corker along the lines of, “Oh and I need to see your original school certificates to prove you can speak English”.

Have you ever heard anything so bizarre? I’ve filled out everything in English including an application form that he gave me, I had my UK passport AND he had a copy of my high school exam certificates in front of him showing I sat English exams at school. But not only that but as far as I recall our entire conversation was in English as that’s the only language I speak! So I said the only thing I could think of which was, “What bloody language do you think I’m speaking at the moment?”

Well, he followed that up with, “Next,” which put an end to the discussion. What else could I do? Not very much it would seem, so all I could do was leave and phone my folks in Spain and beg them to dig through all my stuff when they got back from their holiday and send everything to me. It was such a hassle for them as they got back on a Tuesday and I was starting the following Monday. Due to the time difference they really only had 3 days to get things to me. But luckily (and with the help of DHL) a large envelope arrived for me on the Friday morning with only a few hours of registration time left. Phew!

So almost 2 weeks after I set out to register with the NSW Medical Board, I got back on the bus back out to Gladesville and handed everything to the girl behind the desk and was probably only there for about 10 minutes. She was very pleasant and said, “It’s a good job you came early. We’re expecting a big rush today since everyone starts on Monday!” She had no idea how well I knew that. I then thanked her for her speedy work and told her to apologise the chap that had been on the desk the last time I was in as he was only doing his job regardless of how frustrated it made me!

I left Gladesville with a bit of a spring in my step and headed back into the city centre as I had some emailing to do and we still didn’t have internet in the flat. Also I needed a Tax File Number before starting work and that was something else that needed done online.

My elevated mood was soon shot down though as every internet cafe I went into seemed to have problems getting onto the Australian Taxation Office website. I soon gave into the fact that I was never going to get a TFN and I would be taxed at a ridiculously high rate for the first few months like “emergency tax” in the UK.

Exasperated, I went up to Chatswood Mall to buy a printer that I’d seen on a previous visit and like a glowing orange beacon of salvation I spotted an “Everywhere Internet” station which I think is owned by Stavros of Easyjet fame. I couldn’t resist one more shot at getting the TFN much as I disliked lining the pockets of the Greek entrepreneur. However it was worth every penny and I’d definitely shake the man’s hand as his computers managed the task in 4 minutes! Awesome.

So with registration complete and my TFN number winging its way to me in the post I felt a bit of a celebration was in order. I stopped into the nearest wine shop and bought a bottle of Palandri Margaret River 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon. Another great big red from Western Australia. After only 2 glasses I was feeling a bit more positive about the day but that might have had something to do with the writing on the side of the bottle that said 14%.

32. Cascade Premium Light

Smoothness 2
Cost 2
Piss-Factor 1
Aftertaste 4
Coolness 1

We had these on the day we bought a set of bathroom scales for the flat. The previous few weeks had been a bit over-indulgent and when I stood on the scales I had a bit of a fright. I should have probably cut the beer out completely but instead I thought I’d have a light beer.

What I wasn’t told was that in Australia “Light Beer” didn’t mean less calories like it did in the UK. It just meant less alcohol. Rip off!

31. My First Boost-Juice

Pure awesomeness! These juice stalls are everywhere and you need to try one. They can tailor your drink to exactly how you are feeling at the moment from adding some detox supplements to your frozen yogurt to filling a smoothie full of vitamins and ginseng. Best $5 you’ll ever spend (unless or course you spend $5 on the lottery and win a few million bucks but other than that it’ll be the best $5 you ever spend).

30. Our First New Bed

This was a bit of a significant purchase. Not only was it the first queen sized bed I’ve ever owned and the first non-hand-me-down or non-second-hand bed I’ve owned, but it was also the first major purchase that Isla and I had paid for together. Till now all flat related purchases we’d made in the UK had been covered by me as the flat we lived in was mine and I was happy to cover those costs.

Although the inflatable mattress was reasonably comfortable it needed re-inflating every 3 days and it wasn’t exactly osteopath accredited. As Pacific Highway makes its way into Crows Nest from St Leonards there is a plethora of bed shops. Don’t ask me why there are so many here but it made shopping for a bed easy and within a couple of hours we had not only found a bed and mattress we liked but also managed to get an amazing deal on it. It wasn’t exactly within our budget but we figured that we’d be spending about a third of our time here in bed so we might as well get a decent one.

29. My First Bicycle

No, this wasn’t a pink thing with tassels and stabilising wheels! I have actually owned bikes before – I had a tricycle when I was 2, a BMX when I was 10, a mountain bike when I was 21 and my second mountain bike when I was 28.

This obviously implies that I am a keen cyclist but some of my friends might beg to differ. I have done a fair amount of cycling in my time but it’s been nothing more than a hobby. Maybe it’s a bit more than a hobby. When someone suggests something like “Hey, let’s cycle round Mull,” or “Let’s cycle from John O’Groats to Glasgow,” I’m quick to sign up. Continually, I have the thought running through my head, “I’m a cyclist. I can do this.” Foolish I know – half way round I’m always the one that’s at the back, holding back the tears with a sore arse struggling to push my vast bulk up the next hill vowing never to cycle again.

Looking at this trip to Oz as an opportunity to do something about the belly I’d accumulated over the last few years, I made my mind up to buy my first road bicycle. I really wanted to spend more time on the road and back home I’d even got rid of my off-road tires on the mountain bike and changed them for slicks. So, credit card in hand, I walked into Clarence Street Cyclery and a great bloke called Anthony helped me cycle back out. Mind you he also talked me into spending over $2000 which is probably why he was so friendly.

So thanks to that little purchase we would almost definitely not be buying a car this year and I certainly wouldn’t be able to afford to take the train to work every day. At least that meant that I’d have to cycle the 18km to the Hospital. Oh dear. On the bright side, there may be a later chapter entitled “My First Six-Pack (and I don’t mean beer)”.

28. Joining Medicare

In the UK we are lucky that the majority of our medical expenses are picked up by the Government. I realise that’s what our taxes pay for but still, the NHS is essentially a free service.

Once when I was working in Accident and Emergency at the Royal Infirmary in Glasgow I treated a woman from Afghanistan. Her husband and her had just arrived in the Scotland having left their country and had somehow managed to get themselves to Prestwick airport of all places. Then they took the 40 mile train journey to Glasgow and presented themselves to our A&E dept.

I asked what the problem was and, in broken English, the husband told me that his wife had been having severe stomach pain for months and a local doctor had told him that his wife probably had gallstones and would eventually need her gall bladder removed. They were very poor and couldn’t afford the operation and the aftercare but they had enough to get them into Europe (I didn’t ask how) and then took a cheap flight to Scotland.

They had been told that the healthcare system in the UK was free to everyone and I guess the thought it better to spend their life savings on travelling to the UK than having someone do a half-hearted operation in their home country. I felt terrible for them both and it made me realise how lucky we are to have free access to healthcare. I felt even worse when I told him that I didn’t think it was gallstones and that his wife just had some gastritis or an ulcer which a few tablets would probably sort out. The stones were excluded by ultrasound scan but I still booked her into a surgical ward for the night mainly because she had nowhere else to go.

When people travel to Australia (or any other country for that matter) they are obsessed with insurance. Everyone always worries what would happen if they became ill in a foreign country and how they would pay for their health care. Well, it’s not really advertised but if you are going to live in Australia for any length of time then you can become a member of Medicare. This is a company that covers a great deal of your medical bills should you have them. The government pays for it but some treatments are not covered and non-Australians cannot use the system.

However, a handful of countries (including the UK) have a reciprocal agreement with Medicare. You can walk into any branch – found in most malls and on the high street – and ask for “Reciprocal Medical Cover”. You then show them some identification (including your Australian visa) and ten minutes later you are covered. So we did!

27. Toohey’s Extra Dry

Smoothness 4
Cost 3
Piss-Factor 3
Aftertaste 2
Coolness 3

It was amazing to have a place to live that wasn’t a hotel. I know it sounds incredible but we were actually getting bored of eating out and it was such a good feeling to have a kitchen and a living room of our own. What wasn’t so amazing is that when we first moved in our only furniture was a blow up mattress (which was deceptively comfortable and a steal at $49 from a local camping shop) and one chair.

But that didn’t put us off enjoying our first home-cooked meal in the flat. I suppose this story would be better if we’d eaten crocodile burgers or kangaroo steaks but alas we opted for a Hawaiian pizza straight out of the freezer section of our local supermarket. Still, it tasted fantastic and we washed each slice down with generous gulps of Toohey’s.

I don’t think that it’s a particularly cool beer but what is brilliant is the fact that the bottles have no label. The details of the beer are actually embossed right onto the glass. A quality idea hence is gets a 3 for coolness. Perhaps I should contact the hotel we stayed in that had the Crown label soup bucket on the bar and tell them to stock this instead.

26. T’Gallant Pinot Griso

At the best of times, Christmas time presents a ridiculously difficult chore of buying novel presents for friends and loved ones. You can spend hours and hours wracking your brain for some inspiration for gifts and despite eons browsing what the high street and internet has to offer you may find nothing suitable.

So imagine you are in the position where you are buying a present for someone who is leaving the country as happened to my family the Christmas before we left. They couldn’t buy anything for us to take to Oz as we were already pushing the weight limit and if they did it would have to be very small and very light. Also they couldn’t buy anything for us to leave in the UK as that would be pointless. In short, we just told everyone to give us money. Hey, it’s light and small and I can certainly make room for it.

However, my youngest sister, who had spent a year in Sydney about 4 years ago, excelled herself by booking a meal for us in Cruise restaurant right on Circular Quay. She had spoken to one of the staff there, a pleasant guy called Stuart (who apparently had won some barman-of-the-year award back in Edinburgh) and paid for the meal over the phone with her visa card... from Scotland. How cool was that?

When we arrived or our meal we were shown to our seats which were right beside the huge glass windows which looked out over the harbour to the Opera House. The sun was just setting and the sky was rapidly changing from red to grey-blue to black.

The menu was mainly fish and game based and we opted for snapper and kingfish both of which were divine. Isla got her hands on the wine menu and chose a bottle of T’Gallant pinot griso to go with the fish. It was certainly big enough to handle the rich sauces that accompanied our dishes and it had a lovely, long waxy finish with just enough fruitiness and summeriness to make us remember that although we were settling well in Sydney, we were still really on holiday.

We finished the meal with one of Stuarts speciality cocktails. The bar was adjacent to our table and as he was making them he shouted over, “I’ve got a treat for you two!”

“Really,” we replied together, “what are you making?”

“Vodka and Irn Bru!”

It was orange, but thankfully that’s not what he was making. It looked a bit like a tequila sunrise but was far tastier. It was bitter/sweet courtesy of the vodka, pineapple, white fuzzy peach puree and some other ingredient that I didn’t catch the name of and it had a pleasant dry afternote thanks to the topping of champagne. We asked what it was called but Stuart said it didn’t have a name. In fact, there wasn’t even a cocktail menu – he just knocked up whatever he felt was right for that particular drinker.

He certainly measured us up correctly because despite the fantastic taste of the cocktail, it was loaded with alcohol. That plus the wine put a nice spin on things for the bus trip home.

25. Hahn Super Dry

Smoothness 3
Cost 2
Piss-factor 3
Aftertaste 2
Coolness 2

This German beer from Munich deserves mention. Not because it’s any good – the score above show that it’s nothing other than average – but it was the first ever beer that we drank in the new flat. That alone makes it a yeast-fermented beverage that I will remember for a long time. In fact, apart from some coat hangers and a wok it was the first thing that we ever bought for the flat, not that the sixer lasted that long.

24. Renting White Goods

Mundane I know, but it’s something new for me as I’ve always just bought the stuff I needed or it’s already been in the flat I’m renting. As I said earlier in Australia it’s very common to find that the place you want to rent is unfurnished and if you are lucky you might get a dryer but almost every place we looked at didn’t even have a washing machine or a fridge/freezer.

You options, therefore, are to either, buy them new, buy them second hand in a yard sale or rent them. We went for the 3rd option courtesy of Radio Rentals in Bondi Junction who supplied us with both for a wonderful $9 per week – fully guaranteed. Overall this might not be the most cost effective way to do it but it definitely removes the worry of “what happens if it breaks down”.

The manager of the store was a chap called Nathan and he was really eager to help us in our white good endeavours. He got a bit worried when we said that we stayed north of the bridge as apparently the Bondi Junction shop was not “our local” Radio Rentals.

“If you’ve got a problem with the machines then make sure you call our store and not the call centre or they’ll put you through to the Brookvale branch and they won’t know anything about you,” he said looking a bit worried. “Last time that happened the manager drove down here and wanted to give me a kicking!”

23. Renting a flat in Sydney

At last the flat hunting was over. As I mentioned the properties we looked at steadily improved and we ended up with a rather sizeable place in St Leonards. It was the perfect location for us – close to the train line for commuting purposes and near plenty of amenities. We also discovered that Willoughby St, which is famous for its restaurant culture, was about 2 minutes walk away.

The flat itself was bigger than most we’d seen. It had a large living area with adjacent kitchenette, a big double bedroom, huge bathroom (which actually contained a bath as well as a shower) and a study which could certainly be used as a second bedroom for guests (or for me when Isla was mad with me). As with most Sydney flats there was a balcony but this one was massive – you could almost count this as an additional living room – and it got the sun all morning so was a great place to have breakfast.

Unfortunately, the flat didn’t come with a parking space but since we weren’t planning on getting a car that didn’t matter too much. The final clincher was the fact that the property benefited from a large gym, spa and sauna with a 25m lap pool. Gym membership in Sydney costs a minimum of $80 per month (plus registration fees, etc) so at least we’d made a saving there. You know how it is in the UK – you pay £40 per month for gym membership that you never use! Well at least here it was included in the rent so if I didn’t use it then it wasn’t really a waste of money.

So that all sounds great, doesn’t it? Well there are some things you need to know about renting in Sydney. At all pretty standardised so the following applies to most properties that you look at.

Once you’ve found a place you like the look of then you have to pay a deposit. This is one weeks rent up front which you get back if you end up taking the property. This buys you seven days to think about things but if you decided you don’t want it after, say, 4 days then you’ll only get 3 days worth of your deposit back.

The agent will then speak to the bloke who owns the property and tell him what you’ve written on your application form. On this you are supposed to supply a character reference (which you seem to need for most things here) but this may be difficult if you’ve just arrived in the country and don’t know anyone. I spoke to one of the people who arranged my job over here and they were happy to put their name to paper - even though I’d never met them - so it appears to be a bit of a formality. If the owner feels you are a suitable tenant then you’ll be contacted to sign the lease.

When you sign the lease you are then expected to pay a bond. This is the value of 4 weeks rent which is returned to you at the end of your lease term provided you leave the property in good order. Along with this you need to pay either 2 or 4 weeks rent in advance so the initial outlay is quite steep. Rent is Sydney is high at the best of times so make sure you bring plenty of savings with you.

Savings are also worth having as the majority of properties are unfurnished and the cost of kitting one out may sting a little. We stopped looking at fully furnished places once we realised that “fully furnished” actually was code for “filled with total crap that you couldn’t give away and when it breaks I’ll take a whacking great lump out of you bond thanks very much.”

There are several ways to cut corners furnishing your new home. Sydney is riddled with charity shops and they can be found in most suburbs. Not all of them deliver though and if you have a car then this is a great help. Friends of ours managed to furnish their entire flat for around $400 but they were very frugal and took their time finding the best bargains in the likes of St Vincent de Paul’s and The Salvos. Keep your eyes peeled for garage and yard sales which seem to happen all the time. Almost every lamppost in the city centre has a notice stuck to it (illegally) about furniture for sale.

If you are at your wits end and you can’t find what you are looking for or don’t fancy sleeping in some old third hand bed that someone’s grandmother died in, then don’t despair. Sydney has an Ikea! It’s on the Red Train Line out at Rhodes and you can see it from the train station so it’s easy to find. There is also a sale section near the checkouts where our friends managed to pick up an ex-display double bed for $140!

So once we had a place to stay and some stuff to put in it other than our 2 suitcases we realised that we had forgotten about gas, electricity, phone and internet! The reason that I’ve not put this under a separate heading is that it’s hardly worth mentioning. There is a company called Direct Connect who do the works over the phone in a matter of minutes. I was put through to a lovely girl called Karen who sorted everything out with complete efficiency so we didn’t have to worry about anything. The best thing is that they are a free service and any estate agent can give you their brochure.

The day after signing the lease we moved in and started making our trips to the Salvos and Ikea. After living in hotels for the last 3 weeks it was great to have a place that we could finally call home. However, as I said, we were close to the train station. This didn’t bother us from the train point of view as we lived next to the tracks back in the UK and the trains here are far quieter than the Scotrail ones. Unfortunately, the Aussies are a bit too good at the public transport thing and every train arriving at the station gets it’s own tannoyed announcement. So from about 6am every day and every few minutes we would get some generic woman’s automated voice stating “the next… train… to arrive… on… platform… 2… goes to… Hornsby… stopping at… all stations to…Chatswood… and then… all stations… to Hornsby.” It got a bit irritating after a while and I’ve just realised that the word “tannoyed” has the word “annoyed” in it!

22. Crown Lager

Cost 2
Smoothness 4
Piss-Factor 4
Aftertaste 2
Coolness 1

We’d been staying in our hotel for almost a week and we hadn’t had a single drink in the hotel bar. After another day of seemingly endless administration and tedium we made a point of correcting this.

Australians still run good old fashioned happy hours and this bar ran it from 5pm to 7pm. It was great to find out that all beers on tap were $3 per schooner and that Crown beer was the “beer of the week” and would be $3 per bottle for the rest of our stay. That alone gave it a piss-factor of 4 but it was the most uncool of beers as it didn’t even merit placement in a fridge. Instead they were left lying in a big plastic box of ice and water at one end of the bar with all the labels floating in a sticky mess on the surface.

21. Nightingale Wines Merlot

Darlinghurst has some amazing restaurants and most can be found along a street called Victoria Rd. There is also a great trend towards BYOB (that’s “bring your own booze” for the tee-totallers out there). Needless to say, there are several booming wine merchants on that street thriving on the BYOB culture.

A good idea is to look at the menu outside your restaurant of choice and then go to the wine shop and pick a wine to go with whatever you fancied on the menu. We ate at fabulous but slow restaurant called Café Fellini’s and picked up a bottle of the above wine to go with our rich risotto and powerful king prawn linguini (both scoffed down in minutes).

What a choice. Rich and fruity so much body it tasted like undiluted Ribena. Very little in the way of tannins and far too easy to drink. The food was good but this wine was amazing.

20. Franziskaner

Cost 4
Smoothness 3
Piss-factor 1
Aftertaste 2
Coolness 3

This is a lovely fruity weiss-biere that I had at a beer hall in the Rocks. It was really very tasty but it seemed a shame to drink it too quickly and it was quite pricey so it only gets a piss-factor of 1. Another down-side was that the pub wouldn’t let us sit outside unless we were eating. It took about 20 minutes to convince the German staff that the pretzel we ordered was food despite the fact it was between 3 of us, and that they should let us sit in the sun.

19. Kirin

I was beginning to realise that to try and do 365 new things in a year is a bit of a tall order. It would be easily completed if I had endless funds and wasn’t going to have to spend much of my time working here. With that in mind I decided that I was going to have to be a bit creative with the challenge and incorporate something that I hadn’t considered when starting; alcohol!

Before leaving the UK, Dom Jolly had a fantastic TV show called “Dom Jolly’s Happy Hour” where he travelled the world trying all kinds of booze with the locals and basically getting pissed on the TV channels tab. I didn’t want to copy this but I thought that I might start listing beers and wines that I drank in Oz and give you my totally uneducated and purely subjective comments on each of them.

For the beer I came up with 5 aspects to rate them on which are “Cost” (which I realise varies from place to place but it’s a rough indication of the average price), “Smoothness” (obvious I guess), “Piss-Factor” (how likely you are to get drunk on it due to it’s alcohol content and the size of the bottles/measures/cost etc), “Aftertaste” (self explanatory and really only any use during the first couple of mouthfuls) and “Coolness” (not how chilled it was but how cool I felt drinking it).

Each of these has a score of 1 to 5. For example how cool would I feel ordering an alco-pop? I’d give that a 1. How cool would I feel ordering a Stein of German beer? Well I’d give that a 5 (like I’m sure Merry would have in Lord of the Rings, when he discovered the beer in the Prancing Pony came in Pints).

For the wines… well I thought I’d just give you some chat about what I thought of all the new ones I tried.

Anyway, the first new beer I tried was Kirin (hence the title of this chapter).

Cost 3
Smoothness 4
Piss-Factor 3
Aftertaste 1
Coolness 4

A very tasty Japanese beer that I had with some brilliant noodles at the “Wok on Inn” in Rocks Square. It may well have knocked Sapporo off it’s number one spot in my Japanese beer top 10.

18. A Day at Manly

In Australia Manly is pretty famous as a holiday and beach destination but if you don’t live here then you might never have heard of it. I guess that’s because the beaches of the Sydney area are over-shadowed by the ever-mentioned Bondi.

With a spare day between looking at flats and arranging our financial affairs we thought it would be nice to be tourists again and with that we boarded the Manly ferry at wharf 3 of Circular Quay. 30 minutes and a pleasant boat trip later we were at Manly pier.

Unbelievably, it was busier on the wharf than the airport when landed at Sydney International. Despite it being a Wednesday the place was mobbed and the short walk to the beach had plenty of pushing and shoving going on much like the sort you have to put up with in Marks and Spencer’s around Christmas time.

As we reached spitting distance of the golden stretch of sand we realised that we had forgotten to bring beach towels with us. That didn’t matter though as there were plenty of shops selling all kinds of beach tat with the obligatory shop DJ shouting “Everything here is less than $10. You’ll never shop anywhere ever again.”

A see-through, paper thin, horrifically coloured towel later and a wallet that was lighter by about $5 we were ready for the beach. As beaches go it wasn’t that bad. Nice and long with reasonable surf and the ubiquitous life guards. There were loads of volley ball nets and surf board rental places, as well as some decent bars and some awesome places to eat. Even though the beach was really busy there was still plenty of room. I doubt it would be that way during the weekend thought I suspect a visit to some of the more northerly beaches would be a better bet.

We stopped at a place called Café Rouge for lunch and it turned out to be probably the best meal we had since arriving. Isla had simple beer battered cod that was divine and I had a lamb burger cooked to perfection on Turkish bread with caramelised onions and rocket. Outstanding!

We lazed about the beach for the rest of the day on our crappy towels, books in hand and soaked up some much need sand. It wasn’t difficult to find a quite spot as swimming was limited to the south end of the beach due to the amount of rip curl activity to the north so the north end was almost abandoned. Several applications of sun cream later we met up with some friends and had a couple of tasty beers and the Bavarian Beer Hall on the wharf followed by some incredible pizza’s from a place called Wood and Stone. Who would have thought that goat’s cheese, sweet potato, pumpkin and sun-blushed tomatoes would have gone so well together?

Manly is one of those places that you should visit but I guess I would sum it up as Sydney’s Brighton; a bit more upmarket than Bondi but really no different from any other tourist-trap beach. Would I visit again? Of course, I’ve got mates who stay there. Besides that I’m not sure, but that Lamb-burger… out of this world!

17. Harbour Ferry Ride

There are plenty of stalls and tourist stands offering trips round the Sydney harbour. I’m sure that there is some good chat given to you on the way round but they charge in excess of $20 for the pleasure. A better idea is to get up early one day with a plan in mind and buy a “Day Tripper” ticket which allows you unlimited travel on all of Sydney’s buses, ferries and trains.

After you’ve taken a couple of return trips the ticket as paid for itself. We had spent some of the day flat hunting with one of these tickets and about 5pm decided we’d had enough but didn’t think that we’d got our money’s worth out of the ticket so we jumped on the ferry and took a round trip round the harbour.

It was suppose to be about 30 minutes all in but they had combined 2 ferry services into one and we spent about an hour and a half visiting various wharfs in the area. No commentary but a good way to get an idea of the extent of all the local estuaries and their location.

16. Flat Hunting in Sydney

As you might have guessed by now, a great deal of the 356 Challenge is going to be things I’ve done before only now I’m doing them in Sydney. I don’t want it to seem like a cop out; yes I’ve taken a bus before so what’s the big deal about taking a bus in Sydney?

Well, hopefully by writing it this way, those of you thinking of coming over here might glean some useful pointers for making your trip a bit smoother. Yee Haa! I feel like a frontiersman beating the trail out to… well, out to one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, but you know what I’m getting at!

Anyway, back to the flat hunting. I was out for dinner with a mate the other night and he summed up the rental situation in Sydney in five words, “Ridiculously expensive for no space.” How right he was.

The first obstacle is finding out where you want to stay. We looked at places on a map that would be a reasonable commute for both of us and then we headed out to each of them on the train and had a walk about. People in most areas were friendly enough to chat to us and tell us what their suburb had going for it and it didn’t take long to find a place that we liked.

Once we knew were we wanted to live the next hurdle was trying to see the properties. It’s a strange arrangement here in that properties are shown at specific times, usually at the weekend, and hordes of people turn up to look at them. The local papers usually contain listings as do most estate agents but phoning up mid-week and asking to see a place on your conditions seems to be a no-no. However, that didn’t stop us. Non-conformist to the end, we phoned every agent who had a property we wanted to see and a few of them were obliging.

When I’m at work I introduce myself to my patients by my first name as I hate the old paternal image that some doctors like to portray. However I was told to drop the “Doctor” title into the conversation with estate agents over here and sure enough it made all the difference. Those who said, “I’m sorry but that flat was shown on Saturday,” couldn’t wait to show us it when I said, “But, I’m starting work as an Emergency Department Registrar next week and we really need to get a place sorted out as soon as possible.” I hated doing it but it seemed to work.

Another thing we tried was simply to walk into every estate agent office we saw and explain our situation face to face. The response we got from doing that was much better and they were always willing to take time away from their coffee to show us flats we wanted to see.

The first place we looked at was a tiny one bedroom affair that was about 20 minutes out of town. The front door opened onto the living space that was about 3 metres by 4 metres which also contained the kitchenette. Off of this was a small bathroom with no bath and the bedroom which would have taken a double bed, but only if it was on it’s side! There was also a narrow, seemingly pointless, balcony the area of which should have been used to extend the living area.

I kid you not that there wasn’t enough room to swing a dead cat in there. Not even a dead mouse. In fact, on of Tolkien’s hobbits couldn’t have swung a dead micro-organism in there it was so small.

Then there was the price; A$400 PER WEEK! Can you believe it? I was shocked. My place back home is in West End of a fairly big city and my living room is 8 metres by 8 metres and this box was going to cost me more than my UK mortgage! I really didn’t know what to say but we took an application form anyway and left.

Thankfully, this was the worst of the places we saw. Things steadily improved but there was a distinct lack of space in all the flats we looked at and they were all mystifyingly expensive. One of the estate agents told us that rental prices had doubled in the last 5 years. It almost made buying a place seem more attractive than renting.

15. Getting an Aussie Mobile Phone

If you have a UK mobile phone contract then your handset is normally locked to the company that is providing your service. Although it’s a minor infringement of the law I was advised that I should unlock my phone before heading to Oz and then purchase a pay-as-you-go SIM card once I arrived.

As usual, there were issues as I wrote on the Oz-Blog…


It seems that if you are moving to Oz (or any other country) then the best option for mobile phone issues is to get your phone unlocked and then buy a sim card out there. Simple enough yes?

No?

Nothing is ever simple in the life of Zain. First I go to this shop on Dumbarton Rd near my flat and two uber-weegies give me some rubbish chat about my phone being too difficult to unlock. You see, I just upgraded from my pretty basic Nokia (I've always loved Nokia phones) to a Motorola KRZR in a moment of weakness. The only other option I had was a Sony Erricson and I've broken 3 of those in one year before so I vowed never to go back to them. That said, the KRZR is actually quite a good phone (for a free upgrade). Then they phoned "the Man" and he said he could do it but it would cost £30 and take 3 days? What???

I told them exactly what they should do with their 3 day £30 "bargain" and went into town to find another shop that could help. There is a place under the bridge on Argyll St that I'd heard tell of and yes the guy could do it.

"Takes 15mins and will cost you £20 but I can definitely do it!" he says. "Go for it," I say.

However, it would appear that after putting all the pieces of the phone together, Motorola then dip the phone into liquid metal to coat all the circuits and make them impervious to tampering. So an hour and a half later all manor of tools, drills, screwdrivers and computer connections have been employed and nothing has happened. The bloke then mutters to me, "I've got to cut this bit of the phone open? You realise that is will invalidate your warranty?" No shit mate.

During this ordeal about half a dozen people come into the shop asking if he can unlock their phones. I kid you not when I tell you that he was able to unlock every one of these within seconds while still footering with mine. For one of them he simply shoved what can only be called a "doofer" into the charge-port of one and 3 seconds later is was unlocked!

No word of a lie, there was sparks coming off my phone as hs filed off metal plates and played about with the electronics. But eventually he proved true to his word and shouted "Your in business mate!". I was quite excited but I couldn't understand why he was so excited until he told me that my KRZR was the first one he'd unlocked!!!

Experiment with my phone will ya? Why I oughta...!

Well, job's a goodun and the phone still works. Australian Vodaphone Simcard here I come!

Despite all this getting my phone activated over here was easy. I just walked into a bunch of phone company shops (they are everywhere in Sydney) and found out which deal suited me best. Then I was given my SIM and stuck it in my phone. Hey presto, I was able to call people. I didn’t even need an address as the girl who served me put down the shop address and told us just to call her once we had a place to stay so she could change the details.

Unfortunately, I didn’t actually know anyone in Oz at that point so it seemed a bit of a pointless exercise.

14. Open Top Bus Tour of Sydney

As it sounds, this is an open top bus tour of Sydney. I know they are cheesy and a bit of a tourist trap but they are a great way of getting your bearings when you first arrive in a new place. Take the one in Glasgow for example. For a mere £10 you can have abuse thrown at you in Partick, Maryhill, Pollock, Easterhouse, Castlemilk and Pollockshields. Now you can’t say that’s not a bargain.

The Sydney one is more sedate than that and takes you round some interesting parts of the town. Be warned that it doesn’t go north of the Harbour Bridge and it costs $30. However, you can get on and off as often as you want and the ticket is valid for 24 hours from the time of purchase. We opted to go round the whole loop listening to the commentaries first and then get on and off at points of interest. We stopped at Subway, Thai Express, Sushi Roll, a Slushy stall, a Toilet, a Coffee Bar and ended up at the Cinema. A good, non-touristy way to finish the day’s wanderings.

13. Swimming in a Rooftop Pool

This is exactly what it sounds like. Our hotel had one on the roof which was 15 floors up. The view of “Downtown Sydney” was great and it gave me a great opportunity to get my bearing at the same time as pretending to exercise.

The first time I went up there I was just planning to piss about and watch the world go by but people kept coming in to look at the pool and I had to look like I was actually swimming with purpose. Bloody ended up doing 60 laps!

12. Flying Singapore to Sydney

This was one of these awkward situations where you’re flight is in the evening and your check-out time is at 12 noon. Therefore you have to find a place to store your bags and you also have to wear your travelling clothes all day in case you don’t have a chance to change. Our other big issue was trying to keep the weight in our cases down and so it was on with the hiking boots, jeans, fleeces and jackets even though it was 28 degrees outside and 90% humidity. If I could have got away with it I would have wore my kilt, sporran and flashes too.

Luckily for us the hotel said they would look after our bags for as long as we wanted which let us tour the blissfully air conditioned malls once more. Between us we had a few dollars left so we were on a mission to spend it. This proved totally fruitless and since we had so much time to kill we took in a movie, popcorn and all.

Within 3 minutes of being in the cinema I was wishing that I was back in the sweltering heat wearing every item of clothing I owned. The place was frozen. I mean cold enough that you could see your breath in front of you. Everyone had come in dressed in shorts and t-shirts and by the end of the film they were wrapped in various assortments of shawls, coats and jumpers. I swear if I’d been in there with an umbrella I would have ripped off the material and tried to fashion a poncho out of it.

Anyway, we soon ran out of things to do and thought we might as well head to the airport even though we were going to be over 4 hours early for the flight. At least we could have a wonder round the place and do all the usual things like try 16 different aftershaves and think about taking up smoking just so we could buy those massive boxes of fags.

But of course nothing ever goes smoothly does it. Let me just fill you in on the problem we had with the visas before coming to Oz. If you’ve read my Oz-Blog then just skip this bit although it might provide a quick refresher on the ridiculous hoop jumping we went through to get those bloody bits of paper stuck in our passports…

12 December, 2006
Mission Impossible!


Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to try and find the Australian Consulate in Edinburgh.

I swear that the place doesn't exist.

Isla and I headed through to the 'Burg yesterday as we needed to rectify a faux pas that we made with our visa. We recently updated our passports to those new ones with the micro chips in them so that Big Brother can have an easier time tracking our movements and the powers that be can continue their War of Terror (as Borat put it!) by knowing where their friendlies are so that they can abuse their power by fingering me in the airports (up yours Denver!).

Anyway, the new passports have different numbers which don't correspond to the ones that are on the Electronic Visa acceptance thingy, so we had to head to the Consulate to try and get the numbers changed.

I dare you to have a look on the Net for the Consulate and see if you can find a) more than 1 page with the same address on it and b) a phone number that works and doesn't just go to a crappy info line.

After not baeing able to find it at 69 George St (a derelict doorway) I phoned and 118-118 and they said that is was 93. So we tried this building called Forsythe House and it was just a bunch of accountants. Then I phoned my mate and he looked on the Net again and said that it was 83 (this is on the Australian Government website incidently). But alas, no, There was just some banks and hairdressers around this area. So I phoned another mate who works for the Scotish Exec. and he said that it was 93 (again) so we headed back to Forsythe House and looked again at the brass plated buzzers in the doorway.

Sure enough there WASN'T a sign for the Consulate. There was however, a tiny white piece of paper stuck down with some selotape which said "For Buisnesses not listed here please ring this buzzer" which we did.

The quietest voice in the world said "hello?" which , with my ear pressed against the panel, I could hardly hear.

"Hi, I'm looking for the Australian Consulate" I shouted, assuming that she was probably unable to hear me also, although in hind-sight she was probably thinking "I wish people would stop shouting into the mic down there".

"Wait a moment!"

I wait a moment then her voice whispers back.

"Sorry it's not open today. It's only open on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 1pm to 4pm".

What a load of crap. Working for the consulate (note I've stopped using a capital letter as they don't deserve it) must be the cushiest job in the world. Anyway, looks like we are going to be heading back there tomorrow. Oh well, a few more hours away from the Neds can't be a bad thing.

13th December 2006
Mission Impossible II

As this image shows, Tom Cruise is a whack-job mentalist. However, he is not alone. It would seem that after our 2nd Trip through to Edinburgh today the people who run the Australian Consulate are also mentalists.

This time we found the place without a problem and were greated by a nice sectretary who said that there were 3 people in front of us and we should just take a seat on one of the nice lobby couches. When I say lobby, I mean it was more of a hallway that had a ridiculous amount of through-traffic from all the other companies that share that building (I counted 23 on the plaquard behind the receptionist) and weirdly they all seemed to use the same receptionist. Although to her everything was "no problem" and by the 15th time she had said that down the phone I wanted to beat her within an inch of her life with the Bill Bryson novel that Isla was reading.

After about 45 minutes a plump girl with less dress sense than colour-blind cave-woman that buys her mirrors from "the Hall of Mirrors" and shops at the Sally-Army called us into The Consultate. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when the consulate official showed us into her office and it looked a great deal like this one <-------. There was a single desk, three chairs, a small filing cabinate and a wastepaper basket. I don't really know what the bin was for as the only things on the desk were a pen, a pad of post-it notes (the small ones) and a rubbish plastic Australian desk-flag. There certainly wasn't anything electronic and no sign of a computer.

None-the-less we told the girl of our situation and she said that "The Consulate" only deals with passports in her jumbled accent (actually think that she was Canado-Pole working in the Australian Consulate in Scotland - Mentalists I tells ya!). Instead she phones her head office and they give her the number for some department in the High Commission in London that deals with this kind of thing. So we thank the girl and she says something along the lines of "Good luck wubba weeba and have a bree brinnng great mungbean holiday" like a fat Polish R2-D2/Jar-Jar cross. (She wasn't that bad but I was getting a bit worked up with the fact that we'd spend loads of time trying to sort this mess out and so far not really got anywhere. It's not that I don't like going through to Edinburgh. It's just that it reminds me how shit Glasgow is.)

Anyway we headed home and got into the flat just after 4pm. I pulled the number out of my backpack which was stuck to my passport (don't you love Post-its?) and called it. It rang once then went to an automated message. I'll not bore you with the details but 3 things are important 1) "This is only a message. To speak to a human you'll have to phone our other number 2) their offices are only open 9am-4pm and so it was already closed for the day and 3) the number it gave us to call was a premium rate £1 per minute number! The irony of all this was when Jar2-D2 was writing down the number she told us "Call this one as the one on the website costs £1 per minute beep beep". ARGH!!!

So far this caper has cost us about £40 in train and underground tickets and we are still none the wiser as to what we are supposed to do about our visa/passport mix up. If they tell us tomorrow that we have to go to London I'll... well I don't know what I'll do as we have neither the time, the cash, nor the inclination to go down there, especially at this time of year. I guess we'll find out in about 15hours.

14th December 2006
Mission Impossible III

I don't know why I hate him so much but Tom Cruise is insane. Fact! Also I don't know why I'm wasting so much time looking for JPEGs of Tom being a fool as he really doesn't have anything to do with my Visa (apart from a tenuous link to Mission Impossible and the fact that the second one was shot in Sydney). But I mean look at him!!! He's acting like a damn chimp! Click here to see Tom kill Oprah!

Anyway, 10 Minute phone call and another £10 down the drain.

The premium line does eventually get you through to someone that seems to have a clue but the first 5 mins go a bit like this...

"You've reached the Australian High Commission not-so-hot-line. The answers to most questions can be found on our website. That's www.immi.gov.au. Let me spell that for you w for world, w for wide, w for web, dot for dot, I for idiot, M for moron, M for mongo, I for Insane, dot for full-stop, G for Gawd Almighty, O for obtuse, V for visa?-ha-ha-you-ain't-getting-one, dot for period, A for awkward, U for useless. I'll repeat that for you...

...I'm sure that you get the picture. It's a real money earner for them I think. Anyway, eventually got through to someone who seemed to know their stuff. There was no pausing to look things up on her computer or being put on hold while she asked a collegue. However, she did say that we had to fill in more forms (like that bit in Wayne's World 2 where they try to get the permit for Waynestock) and that we had to send them to the issuing office.

THE ISSUING OFFICE!!! That's the fools who told us to go on this wild goose chase in the first place. This whole thing has been like shopping for shoes with a chick; try 42 pairs on in 13 different stores and then go back to the first shop and buy the original pair.

So, the forms are filled out and scans of the new pasports have been sent and hopefully we'll hear from them by the morning. At least we don't have to take a trip to London (yet!).



21st December 2006
Mission Impossible IV


Yeeeee Haaaaaa!

At last! With one working day left until Xmas I received an email from the Immigration people in Sydney saying that they have updated our visa details. It only took about twenty phone calls and emails to 3 different departments in the DIMA in Parramatta, but it's done.

We are finally and definitely heading to Oz. Now I a really excited. Special thanks to Steve at International Medical Recruitment for leading us by the hand every step of the last 12 months. For you medics out there who are thinking of going to Oz I definetly recommend going with these guys. They really have made everything easy moving to Sydney.

…So as I was saying nothing ever goes smoothly and low and behold while we are checking in for the flight the girl behind the desk says, “You do not have a visa,” WHAT!!! I explain the likely reason is that the electronic visa is probably still attached to our old passports despite what the witch at the passport agency told us. My Singlish isn’t very good and I think something was lost in the translation and there followed lots of “sit over there” and “did you lose your passports?” and “I’ll need to Telex Australia” and “can I see your old passports” (which we luckily brought with us just in case) and “I’ll need to speak to my manager”. I think you get the picture. An hour later the girl was so flustered that I think she just wanted us out of her country and blagged us onto the plane, visa or no.

So then we had the joy of spending 7 hours in international airspace expecting to reach customs at Sydney and being politely told to “Wrack Off,” on the next flight out of Australia. Well, you’ll never guess what happened next. We landed at Kingsford Smith Airport, grabbed out hand luggage from the overhead storage, walked off the plane, went up to customs handed our passports over to “Shaun” (who was build like the proverbial brick dunny)…

…which he stamped and said, “Good on ya mate,” and that was it. After all that stress and uncertainty during the last few weeks good old Shaun just stamped them and let us through. Bonzer ya beaut! We thought this surely must be mistake but once we left the airport and checked in at our hotel we went to the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs to get the real, non-electronic, visas for our passports. Before I could explain that there might be a problem she had printed them both off and had stuck them onto the relevant page. I was still finishing my first sentence when she was shouting “Next!” and waving forward the person behind us. Truly there is no red tape in Australia.

11. Facial

For any of you gutter-minded males out there, this isn’t what it sounds like. I actually went to a Spa and had a facial done today. Isla is always going on about how nice it is having you nails done or getting a massage so I decided to go the whole hog and get a top-of-the-range facial in the hotel’s spa.

First let me say that it was amazing. For anyone that’s not had one of these, I totally recommend it. I’m not saying that I’ll be down the beauticians every other day getting myself “treated” but I definitely won’t be averse to trying other things of this ilk.

It started off with me being taken into a quiet room and lying down on a bench. I then had my face washed with some cleansing gel with I think had menthol in it. After that the girl scrubbed my face with an exfoliant and then put something next to me that blew hot steam onto my face for about 10 minutes. She then started going on about how Rose Quartz stones were able to release energy but her accent was so strong that it wasn’t until the end of the treatment that I realised what “Ro Kwah” actually was.

She took the stones and rubbed them on my face for another 10 minute which was so soothing that I almost fell asleep. Next she massaged the whole of my face with her fingers and it was quite a weird, but pleasant sensation. After than I got a shoulder and neck massage with some sort of Tiger Balm and then she covered my face in a mask cream and again I was left for about 10 minutes while it worked it’s way into my skin.

When she came back she cleaned my face again and then sat me up and gave me a back massage to finish off. When I stood up I could hardly walk out the door as I felt so spaced out. It was an amazing feeling; totally relaxed and refreshed at the same time. As soon as I got back into my hotel room I had a look in the mirror and my face looked totally different; clear and bright and lots of blemishes had gone. That probably has something to do with the fact that in the middle of the massages she spent a good five minutes squeezing out black heads and spots (mine not hers).

As I said before, a great experience. Not something I’ll be rushing to do every day but certainly something I’d recommend you all try.

10. Street Luge

As cool as this sounds, I’m afraid it was quite a bit tamer that you might imagine. If you’ve ever seen street luge you’ll know that it’s a case of lying on your back on essentially a long skate board and flying down hill as fast as possible. Well this was nothing like that.

When you get off the cable car at the top of Sentosa Island you can either walk down the hill to the beach or you take the luge down. In this case it’s more of a go-cart affair but it’s still really good fun. That said, it would be more fun if the minimum height was more than 90cm as lots of folk letting their kids go down and as is the want of children, they took ages. Actually, some of them were faster than their parents who were behind them shouting “slow down, slow down!”.

We belted down the track as fast as we could trying to look cool in our pointless helmets but all to soon we ran out of road. It’s certainly a novel way to get down to the beaches on Sentosa but you can’t help wishing that the track was longer and steeper and without lots of kids.

A good bonus though was that coupled to the luge ticket was a ride back up on a chair lift. After checking out the beaches, the dolphin lagoon and the aquarium we hitched a ride up to the cable car station on this and it saved us having to walk all the way back up. Being lazy rules.

9. Cable Car to Sentosa

I’ve been on plenty of cable cars before, having spent many winters on at least one snowboarding holiday, but not like this one. Sentosa is Singapore’s answer, albeit a massively downscaled answer to Disney World. It’s a small island about 500 metres off the southern coast and you can either drive or walk across the short bridge or take a 2 minute boat ride over the narrow stretch of sea.

There is also another route over to the island (not including swimming) and that’s to take the cable car. Much like those seen in the Alps this one, touted as the oldest in the world as it was built in 1974, leaves from the top floor of one of the Trade Towers on the mainland and heads over the water to the highest point on Sentosa Island. As well as the normal cable car there is also the option of paying and extra S$5 and getting a glass bottom one which is definitely not for those with a fear of heights. To anyone who has skied in Val d’Isere, if you want to imagine what the glass bottom one is like imagine taking the crazy chair lift that drops off the cliff from the main valley into La Fornet but constantly being at the top of that mountain ridge. Well it’s a bit like 10 minutes of that. None the less, we opted for this type of car and it was certainly worth it. Not only are the views better but we got to jump the queue on the way back ahead of those waiting on the regular cars.

7 & 8 Satay and Crab

Isla and I decided, again, to try somewhere new for dinner. We’d heard that the restaurants at Boat Quay were something of a sight to behold so we sauntered down there as the sun was setting and the afternoon heat was beginning to fade. It was a pleasant stroll from our hotel but when we arrived we were not prepared for the assault we received from the restaurant staff.

Boat Quay is a 500 metre strip of restaurants next to the river in the Financial District. It’s much like a market place and as you walk from restaurant to restaurant you are attacked by waiters and waitresses saying “Eat here,” and “Good curry here,” and “Lot of seafood here”. We opted for one that sold both Thai and seafood as that’s what Isla and I wanted respectively.

For starters I had proper chicken and beef Singapore Satay which was amazing. Many tourist guides say that satay is a must and so I felt it would be rude not to. The satay sauce was rich and oily and full of peanuts and there was tons of it. I only wish I’d had more skewers to dip in the sauce. Amazing.

I’ve never eaten crab before. I’ve had crab balls and crab sticks but never a full crab. So that’s what I had for my main. It was strange. The crab sat in a bowl of chilli sauce staring at me, waiting for me to tuck in. I grabbed it by the shell and lifted it up and then realised that the body shell was hollow and when I turned it over all that was left in the shell was something that looked like a single lung and some other crustacean organs. The claws were much the same as those of lobster but the meat was a bit firmer and fishier. The sauce was really tasty but I almost had to eat it with my eyes closed as it had the consistency of egg white that’s not been cooked properly and I was trying to forget that it was basically boiled crab guts and chilli sauce. None-the-less it was another first but I was regretting it later on that night!

6. First Singapore Sling

OK, I realise that this is not my first cocktail in Singapore but it’s my first ever Singapore Sling which is one of the tourist attractions from the area. It was invented in the 1920’s by a bloke called Ngiam Tong Boon when he worked in the Raffles Hotel as a bartender. They are exceptionally tasty and go down a bit to easy but at least there is Happy Hour so you can drink your fill for a bit less.

As per every guidebook on the planet we had these in the Long Bar in Raffles Hotel which was like taking a trip back in time 85 years. There was wicker everywhere and the fans in the ceiling were automated paddle shaped ones that wafted back and forth like a team of rowers. Actually they moved so slowly that there wasn’t really any cooling action generated by them but in the 20’s they must have looked ultra-modern.

The bartenders and waiters looked like something out of Bugsy Mallone which added a nice touch. However, the best thing was the sign on the wall that said “Littering Encouraged”. You see, they serve these wooden boxes of peanuts in their shells and everyone is expected to just chuck the shells on the ground. It puts a new meaning to the phrase “straw on the floor”. Of course I joined in, however, closing time must be a nightmare as not only is there loads of shells everywhere, but there are pigeons and sparrows all over the bar trying to eat the nutty left overs.