I Miss You

I was reflecting this morning that the last few months have been unusually eventful. One week in late August, I found out my contract wasn't to be renewed. Later that same week I missed my flight to Barcelona. And when I did arrive in Sitges - a day late - I fell ill after eating a dodgy paella. The holiday that I planned in January, and looked forward to for months, was ruined, and I wondered, again, if life is nothing but a constant series of tests and challenges.

I was very worried about the prospect of jobhunting as the credit crunch started to bite. Thankfully, as previously posted, I found a new job fairly fairly easily, ironically starting the day that Lehman's went under. The new job is great - so much better than the last - and I'm incredibly thankful for that. Firstly, the work is good. Secondly, I'm on the third floor above ground; which hands-down beats the dark, dingy, airless basement I worked in for Three Long Years. And even though the London office is fairly small, there is a canteen where the firm provides a free lunch each day, prepared by chefs poached from Oxo Tower Restaurant. And we can help ourselves to drinks and snacks any other time of the day. When we want a change, the shops of Regent Street or the restaurants of Soho are two minute's walk from the office.

Meanwhile, we've had an incredibly mild autumn. Just two-and-a-half weeks ago, I was sunbaking in Kensington Gardens when it was 23 degrees. Last night, it snowed. The last time it snowed in London in October was 1934. That's 74 years ago! Very very strange.

And through of all this - the big stuff and small - I keep making mental notes to tell my grandmother about this or that, when I next speak with her. She'd have sympathised with the frustration of jobhunting, and been pleased to know how I'm getting on with the job, and, equally so, she'd be amused by how it was snowing just last night.

The trouble is that she passed away in July, and it hurts that I'll never be able to share these things with her. We used to speak regularly, at least once a week, usually as I walked to work . And whether it's denial, or force of habit, or that I plain miss her... it's moments like this, when I want to speak with her and forget that she's gone, that I miss her the most, and find the hardest.

I miss you, Yia Yia.

Virgin Ambulance Helicopter lands in Piccadilly Circus

Not something you see every day: Piccadilly Circus shut down so an ambulance helicopter can land. Traffic was backed up along Regent Street and Piccadilly, and throughout the West End. Apparently there was a fatal road accident on Shaftesbury Avenue (the road directly behind the helicopter).

On a (somewhat inappropriate) side-note, the top-most digital advertising display shows the countdown to the world premiere of the new James Bond film, Quantum of Solace.

Wellcome, Mr Bourne

Today I visited the very cool "Wellcome Collection" museum in Euston. Of note in the permanent collection were Florence Nightingale's moccasins (who seems to have been a better nurse than stylist), Napoleon Bonaparte's toothbrush, and Charles Darwin's walking stick, all of which can be viewed in a slideshow.

I also snapped a photograph of a Bourne Ultimatum film location on York Road near Waterloo Station. If you've seen the film, you'll know exactly what I mean.

The Farewell Tour

Number one in my list of lessons learned from Cher, is that when you finish a job, you don't just go quietly into the night. Oh no. You have to leave in a big way, with colour, excitement, and costume. You have to drag out the departure to that excruciating point where people are not-so-secretly wishing, and practically begging, that you'd just bugger off already.

With that in mind, and in lieu of Cirque de Soleil, I busied myself in my final weeks at The Firm with a grand Cher-esque farewell tour of all the things in and around EC4 (the region of the city where The Firm is located) that I had failed to find the time to visit in my lunch breaks, before work, after work, on weekends, or at any time for that matter, despite working in the same location for three torturously long years.

First up, here is Twining's original shop on the Strand. Note how it's a single story building squeezed between two much taller buildings? That's because it dates from 1706. This was Mr Twining's original tea room. Now it sells overpriced tea and biscuits to tourists, and unwitting locals. How overpriced? Well, let's say that if you happened to be returning home to Australia in 2006 for the first time in nine months, and happened to shop here, then you could have saved around 30% by buying the exact same items at Heathrow Airport.

Then I visited Dr Samuel Johnson's house. It is here that he wrote the first decent English dictionary. There were dictionaries before Johnson, but, as I learned at the museum, those earlier efforts had unhelpful definitions like "Red: a colour". Johnson is also famous for his aphorisms, one of the best known being "when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford." Of course Mr Johnson didn't have to travel on the over-crowded under-ventilated Central line every morning (when it's running), negotiate in Polish to purchase an Iced Caffe Mocha, or put up with idiots who become technologically incompetent - and slow down - when presented with "high-technology" items like a cash machine or a railway station ticket barrier. Because if he did, I think, he might have thought a little differently of the place, and tired pretty bloody quickly.

The Golden Boy of Pye Corner is a fat golden cherub who marks the spot where the Great Fire stopped burning and all the fat kids started eating pies to celebrate. And, of course, I mean the Great Fire of 1666. There were other hugely destructive fires in London, of course, but they were not as great, it seems, as that in '66.

Most people I know visit St Bart's to attend the GUM clinic. But everyone needs to know it's grossly underfunded and they like to tell you to come back in two months to "get that resolved", so no-one ever really needs to visit... but if you do, the hospital museum is kinda neat, in a grossly underfunded kinda way. The Hogarth-painted staircase is impressive. Personally, I liked this little plaque which memorialised the fictional first meeting of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. No doubt the good doctor had returned from Afghanistan with a raging urinary infection, and was waiting to be told to come back in two months.

St Bartholomew-the-Great is a fantastic church tucked between St Bart's Hospital and Smithfield Market. At one time it was a huge church, now reduced to maybe a quarter of the original size. The interior is breathtaking, and instantly recognisable. It's featured in many films, including Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Shakespeare in Love, The (very boring) End of the Affair, Elizabeth, The Golden Age, The Other Boleyn Girl. I remember it as the church where Hugh Grant didn't get married in Four Weddings and a Funeral.

I wandered through Smithfield Market - which always excites me, for reasons that I don't fully comprehend, but perhaps because it's a meat market - down St John Street, through Passing Alley (which apparently was originally and appropriately named Pissing Alley), to St John's Gate. This was the south gate to the Priory of St John, home to the Knights Hospitallers. The Order of St John bought the gate in the late 19th century, and its now the headquarters of St John's Ambulance. There is a museum here, which I found rather boring, and don't recommend you waste a valuable lunch break to visit.

The London Silver Vaults is amazing. Built to be private-hire vaults for London's wealthiest, the demand didn't satisfy the business plan, so it was turned into a bizarre shopping mall. Three stories below ground, you can wander around the rabbit warren of corridors, and peer into the shops (converted from vaults, but retaining the heavy vault door) which are filled with all things silver. Naturally security is tight, so I didn't risk taking a photo.

After a brief visit to Staple Inn, I can say I have visited all of London's inns of court, but I've never been to me. The most interesting of the inns is the Middle Temple and Inner Temple complex, located adjacent to The Firm. It's here that Temple Church is located, built for and by the Knights Templar in the twelfth century as their headquarters. It will be familiar if you've read the novel, or seen the film of The Da Vinci Code. (And that reminds me, Dan Brown, Akiva Goldsman, and Ron Howard still owe me two hours of my time, that I will never get back).

Nearby is Inner Temple Gardens. Shakespeare set an opening scene from Henry VI Part I here; it's the place where one man picks a red rose, and another man picks a white rose, and so began the War of the Roses. I know I am over-simplifying a great work of art here, but surely the general gist is more important than the burden of detail? (Oh, and incidentally the "white rose" people won, which is why it appears over the top of the red rose on the Tudor Rose logo. There you go!) Anyhow, it's here that the progenitor of the Chelsea Flower Show was held, before moving to... Chelsea. This year, being the 150 anniversary, a special one-off Flower Show was held. The Firm sponsored it, and while I have no interest in gardening, I felt it my duty and obligation to relieve the firm of one ticket that might be used on something unimportant like entertaining a client who clearly doesn't need the free ticket if they can afford The Firm's outrageous fees. What is relevant, is that this is the location where I enjoyed my last Pimm's and lemonade for Spring/Summer 2008. The fruit alone accounted for one of my "five-a-day".

Continuing the never-ending tour of all things odd and vaguely interesting, I trekked up to the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons on Lincoln's Inn Fields. This is the thinking man's Ripley's Believe It or Not, with an amazing collection of human and animal bits-and-pieces, including Europe's oldest anatomical preparations and the 7'7" skeleton of the tallest man who ever lived. A lot of stuff is too freaky for words. If you have a burning desire to find out what the skeleton of an eight-week old fetus looks like, then this is the place for you.

On the other side of Lincoln's Inn Fields (largest public square in London, and thought to be an inspiration for New York's Central Park, as Wikipedia tells me, so it must be true), is Sir John Soane's museum. Before it was a museum, it was his house. Soane is one of London's famous architects, and his house is real nice to boot.

Right opposite Whitechapel tube station is Royal London Hospital, which looked after Joseph Merrick in the late nineteenth century. There is a little museum hidden away in the hospital, and I visited so that I could see the exhibition dedicated to Merrick. There I saw the actual mask and cap worn by Merrick, plus the cardboard model church that he constructed. The model church is dramatised in the film, but it is not, in reality, a model of St Phillip's Church, located adjacent to the hospital.

The Firm is a sponsor of Historic Royal Palaces, so I used my freebie pass to gain entry at Hampton Court Palace and the Tower of London. I've been to the Tower before, but wanted to go back and check out the Crown Jewels again. Quite vulgar really, but only in that way that they're vulgar because they're not mine. Hampton Court Palace is great. It's just what a palace should look like, I think. I was overjoyed to find the entrance to the last two grace-and-favour flats in the entire complex. At one time there were seventy flats housing the freeloaders.

On my second last day, I celebrated my imminent departure by having lunch with my friend, and fellow City worker, Martin at Vertigo 42. This is the Gary Rhodes operated champagne bar on the 42nd floor of Tower 42. I can think of no braver way for us to have marked the seventh anniversary of 9/11 than lunching at the very top of the tallest office building in the City, in the heart of its financial district.

Madrid Pride 2008

In July, which seems like a lifetime ago, when it was summer, which seems like a lifetime ago, I went to Madrid for their annual Orgullo Gay pride event. Part of me loves this event, because it's Madrid (wonderful city), and it's Spain (mucho gusto), filled with latin men (ditto), and it's always sunny (unlike London).

However, the bit I don't like is that I end up spending almost the entire time surrounded by people from London. It's like the special holiday episode of a bad 70s American sitcom where the "whole gang" win a "surprise vacation" somewhere, with various subplot contrivances that facilitate the entire cast to also miraculously holiday in the same location at the same time. And as we all know, the rule of the sitcom is that the story must resolve, by the end of the episode, to exactly the same point where each episode began. The Brady Bunch always end up loving each other, and the castaways always end up back on Gilligan's Island. Likewise, I always end up partying among a bunch of people from London - some of whom are just as vain, self-absorbed, and arrogant when abroad - and one week later, we're back home. Repeat.

Anyhow, here are some videos I shot from my time in Madrid this year. First up is the Infinita party. This is the main event following the parade on the Saturday night. Infinita is always held in a stadium, and around 20,000 people attend. This year's event was poorly run, with ridiculous queues. We queued to collect tickets, we queued to get in, we queued for security, we queued for drink vouchers, we queued at the bar, we queued for the toilets... and then they finished the event more than 1½ hours early.



The next night, all the same people went to a much smaller venue called La Riviera for the SuperMartxe party. This was much more intimate, and much more fun. Clearly the €30 cover charge does not meet the organisers costs though, so next year I'd prefer to pay double if the organisers would deign to switch on the bloody air-conditioning. Apparently, it was rota. Sure, whatever. I've been to some sweat-boxes in my many years of "going out" (Turnmills, anyone? Please, let me press the button on that sweatshop)... but this year's SuperMartxe was unreal. Even Tina Cousins stopped her (backing-aided) performance, to whine about the heat.

Pouring Rain

The bad news is that I will continue to be burdened with employment; the good news is that I have a job.

So it's the evening of the day that I'm told I no longer have a job with The Firm, come September 12... I'm determined to make this into an opportunity, and so after gym, dinner, reading some blogs, discovering (to my horror) that I'd put the equivalent of £50 through the washing machine after Soho Pride, wasting an hour on Gaydar et al, and checking my downloads, I touched up my CV and posted it to four job sites around midnight.

The following morning, having woken from a necessarily zopiclone-induced slumber, my phone starts ringing around 8:30am. It was a recruiter. While speaking with him, I heard the call waiting announce two more calls. Within two minutes of hanging up, the phone rang again. Again, more calls on call waiting. As soon as I got out of the tube at Chancery Lane, I received a text message advising me I had three messages... and the phone rang again. And this is how the next 24 hours played out. Between Wednesday morning and Thursday lunchtime, my phone - almost literally - did not stop ringing. My voice mailbox filled; that's fifty messages. Somewhat wizened to the sharkpool of IT recruiting, I wasn't sure what to make of it all.

The most significant of these phone calls from recruiters was one guy who was desperate to send me CV to a private equity firm. He did so on Wednesday morning, and by 1pm he rang me back to arrange an interview at the client company... for the following morning. I figured this was all a load of bollocks at a shite firm, but was keen to go along with it. I couldn't have been more wrong. The job was a good one, at a large private equity firm in the heart of the West End. Now, I happen to think that private equity might well be the devil's work... but fortunately I've been whoring myself to big companies for years, so I'm hardened. This doesn't bother me anymore, provided they pay, and the price is right.

What is important is that the work sounds interesting, the offices are beautiful, the IT department is not in the basement, and there might be the possibility of travel to the other offices. So things look really good, on paper. How this all plays in the real world, I am yet to find out. But for the moment, I'm breathing a sigh of relief, as I might have dodged a bullet - and a bout of unemployment - just as the country tips into dark times.

End of the Line

So my line manager calls me into his office this afternoon, to tell me two things.

Firstly, they are very happy with my work these past six weeks. Extremely happy. Apparently, I've had glowing reviews from my project manager, which is commensurate with the fact that I'm about four days ahead of my work schedule right now (and will probably be 7 days ahead by the end of the week).

Despite that, they're not going to renew my contract. I have a little over three weeks left until I am no longer required to attend the Firm day in, day out. My project manager has also been axed; in his case, his contract has been shortened by six months.

If I lost my job a year ago, or even four months ago, I'd probably be overjoyed. The Firm has been tightening the screws for eighteen months, and it's not enjoyable to work in an environment where everyone lives in fear of a noose slipping 'over their head.

But the funny thing is that these past six weeks - when I've had proper development work, and it's been properly managed - have been hands-down the best weeks of the past three years. I love the irony of it all. And I especially love how life likes to wait for a moment when everything is peachy to throw me a curve-ball. Or am I missing the point? Is life meant to be a constant trial?

At least my exit is to be conventional. Recently, one employee disappeared one afternoon without explanation, never to return, just like a John Grisham novel. About three weeks later, everyone in the department received a one-line e-mail from the general manager saying "After nineteen years with [the Firm] _____ _____ has decided to leave the firm for greener pastures". That's it. No explanation. No presentation. No leaving gift. What's that about?

Anyhow, I'm trying to be upbeat, and I know it's going to be very important to do so in the coming weeks, but right now I'm finding that a little hard.

Kylie X 2008

Last Wednesday, Greg and I jumped on a catamaran to the O2 Arena on the Greenwich peninsula in the docklands. The O2 was previously known as the Millennium Dome, but is now being slowly turned into an entertainment centre of epic proportions. At present there is the O2 Arena stadium, a more intimate music venue, nightclubs, cinema complex and a massive food court. The O2 Arena seats 20,000, and was the venue on this night for Kylie Minogue's X concert.

The show was pretty good, but not as good IMHO as her 2001 On A Night Like This Tour, which was livelier and more faithful to her pop roots. Most of the songs in this show were sourced from her X album, which is, apart from three tracks, quite average. With fewer feathers this time round, the standout attraction was the incredible LED visuals on the stage backdrop and floor.

I Want To Ride My Bicycle

I bought a bicycle this past weekend. It's actually been on my mind for some time, so I took it as a sign that I needed a bike when Westminster Council kindly installed a bike rack on the street outside my flat. Their decision almost justifies my £30/month share of the council tax.

The cycle is a Carrera make, a hybrid type, in a matte-black finish. Only one of these attributes was relevant to my purchase, and it would be churlish to suggest otherwise. After all, there are few more important things than the bike looking cool, if it is to ridden and enjoyed.

On Sunday, when it was thirty degrees and sunny, I rode the bike from Bayswater to London Fields to meet some friends at the pool there. This is a distance of about 13 or 14 kilometres, which I'm very proud of. It's worth mentioning that London is pancake-flat, which is immensely helpful for cyclists.

Yet even cooler than zipping around London in the fresh air is how I can automatically record my movement with Nokia Sports Tracker. This is a neat application that came pre-installed with my recently-acquired N82. The application uses the phone's internal GPS receives to record my travel and infer other information like average speed etc. It can even automatically upload the data to the web to share. Check out my journey from London Fields to Shoreditch to see what I mean.

A Very London Day

I'm back in London after a few weekends away: first Madrid, then Brisbane. I wanted to really appreciate being back home with "a very London day"... that is, a day doing things that made the most of living in one of the world's most exciting cities, and to remind me why I live in one of the world's most over-populated, stressful, and under-resourced cities.

That was the plan at least, and part of that plan was walking over to Portobello Road for a paella from the market, a quick wander through the stalls, an afternoon sunbathe in Kensington Gardens, a quick trip to the gym, and an afternoon in Soho. However, before I knew it on this Saturday, three weeks of laundry soon laid waste to my plans.

I didn't venture out of the house until 3pm, to go to gym. I arrived half an hour later to discover that I left my shorts at home. Very annoying! And not the first time I've forgotten something for gym, which makes it doubly annoying. I decided to try my trick of buying a cheap pair of shorts, say £5-£10 (thank God for sweatshops during a personal crisis like this) from H&M... but couldn't find anything suitable, or pretty, and it was about 40 degrees in that bloody airless Covent Garden basement and I was hungry and about to faint, and now also soaked in sweat, so I decided to leave. I was now an additional 45 minutes behind schedule, and still shortless.

Swallowing my pride, I trundled home on the tube. I picked up a coffee from Starbucks at Queensway, got the shorts, got back down to street level, realised I left the coffee in my flat, went back for it, walked to the tube, down stairs, onto train, exhausted. When the train stopped at Marble Arch with the inevitable announcement that we would be held at that station for "at least ten minutes" I almost burst into tears. So I got off and walked to street level, and jumped on a bus on Oxford Street - World's. Busiest. High. Street. - jam packed with Saturday traffic and shoppers. As soon as the bus doors slammed shut I thought better of my decision. The bus travelled two feet and then jerked to an abrupt halt. Ten seconds later, another two feet, another abrupt stop. And kept doing this. Over and over and over and bloody well over. I was now irritable, hot, sweaty, nauseous, still about to faint, and very very late. At least ten minutes later (yes, I KNOW, I should have stayed on the tube), I got off at the very next stop after where I got on - yes, it took that long to travel 100 metres - and walked to Bond Street station, and got back on the tube, which was start/stop for the remaining three stops to Holborn.

I got to gym and started my program at 6, around 3 hours after I first left home. I was expectedly furious that my day was ruined. RUINED! But eventually I thought otherwise. I burst out laughing when I realised that what I wanted this Saturday was a very London day... and that's precisely what I got... I'd just forgotten how this stuff happens all the bloody time in London!!

Three Things Learned In London In (Almost) Three Years

Yesterday was the third anniversary of the day I left Australia. It is cliché, but life in Australia seems like a lifetime ago. I left Australia with big dreams, but an even bigger hole in my heart knowing that I was leaving behind a boyfriend, albeit temporarily as I expected to be the case. This working holiday was meant to last one year, at the end of which I planned to return to domestic bliss in Brisbane. How little did I know. Before that one year time limit had lapsed, everything about my life would be completely different: where I lived, what I did, who I knew, my finances, my relationship status blahblahblah.

Talk about future shock. I've often wondered whether, given the opportunity to travel back in time, what I would say to "me" three years ago, knowing what I know now. What would I do differently? Probably very little. It's one of the mysteries of life, I think, that "totally wonderful" things almost never replace "totally bad" things; I sometimes wonder if life, instead, is a series of trade-offs. Ergo, I could say, I lost a boyfriend in Australia, but I gained a life elsewhere in the process. It would be great if I could say one is better than the other. But I can't, and I'm not sure it's true, so I won't. As Will says, there is nothing either good or bad, only thinking makes it so.

Reading one of London Preppy's blog posts this morning, I was reminded me of the peculiarities of London life, compared with life back in home. And that in turn reminded me of one of my own blog post from two years ago, in which I reminisced on what I'd learned in my first 7 months in London. So in honour of my recent anniversary, I present the further list of things that I've learned in London in the three years since leaving Australia:

1) Life in London is one of extremes. Life in Brisbane was a little more constant, where most days were like "yeah, I feel okay... but only okay... not great... not miserable". But here, emotions are a little more manic. When I'm low, I feel like a small cog in the gargantuan money-making machine of the city (and City). And yet when things are good, I feel so lucky to be living in what seems like the centre-of-the-universe. Nauseatingly London-centric, I know. Yet strangely, life in London is almost always one of those extremes, and rarely anything in-between. When I'm asked if I'm "still loving London" - as I so often am when holidaying in Australia - the most accurate answer I can think of is, "I love it 95% of the time, and I hate it 5% of the time". Maybe this balance will change one day, which is when I'll know it's time to pack up and move on.

2) There is a lot to be said for the easy-going Australian sensibility. People keep to themselves in London - which at times I must admit is wonderful, like a warm blanket, when I want to hide - but it also does often add up to moments where you feel like you co-exist with eight million people, yet know none of them. It can be, at times, incredibly lonely. Someone once said to me that in English culture, one needs to be introduced first before attempting to get to know someone. I'm not sure it's quite as extreme as it was, say 100 years ago, but there does seem to me that there is a lingering sentiment. So I think it no strange coincidence that the majority of my closest friends in London are Australians, most of whom are people I did not know before I left. I love multicultural London, but for that instant/immediate connection I can't go past an Australian, it's just easier.

3) A smile, apparently, means more than just a smile. I attend the same gym that I have attended since taking my first flat in Covent Garden in 2005. It seems to me to be basic common courtesy that if you see the same faces three or four times a week, it's not only appropriate but basic common courtesy to acknowledge those people. The form of the acknowledgement might vary, from a cool-nod-of-the-head to a warm smile. I really don't care what it is, as long as it's there. But for some, it seems, that's too much. Without any exaggeration, I could lock eyes with someone at my gym, and acknowledge them with the briefest of smiles, and will still be blanked... three years after first clapping eyes on them. The rudeness is staggering. Which makes me think that to some people, a smile always always means more than a smile... and that's just plain bloody silly.

Ibiza

There is so much hype about Ibiza, with so much written about the island, that I feel it's near impossible to offer a fresh point of view. And yet my recent eight day trip to the island - my first - has been rather balanced, with everything in moderation... including, one might say, moderation itself... so perhaps this is what I should write about.

Ibiza is regarded as the birthplace of a certain type of music, the "Balaeric Beat" that transferred to the United Kingdom in the late 80s on a tidal wave of ecstasy. If I had a pound for every time someone told me that "Ibiza is not what is like five/ten/fifteen years ago", I could probably afford one of the island's beautiful sea-side villas. And even though this was my first trip, my gut instinct tells me those people are correct. Ibiza lures the peeps with its seductive cocktail of sun, sand, sounds, sex, and substances. But it's the latter two - the sex and drugs - that really sells the island. Don't get me wrong, I'm as up-for-it as the next person. But it seems to me that many, many people must come to Ibiza and barely see the inside of their hotel room, let alone a beach. And that's a shame, because the island is truly beautiful, and the Mediterranean lifestyle is quite special.

I visited for the closing parties, during the last week of September, which, I understand, is a time of year that attracts a slightly older (read: thirty-something) crowd, and mostly Europeans. The chavvy Brits tend tend to prefer the height (or nadir, as you may see it) of summer. I stayed in the majority-gay Hotel Cenit. The hotel is 70s chic, but the location is unbeatable, perched on the hill-top above Figueretes Beach. The rooms are fresh and clean, yet minimally decorated. Some of the rooms - including my own, thankfully - have an amazing million-dollar view.

The secret to a successful Ibizan holiday - as I discovered, and confirmed by veterans - is to balance that cocktail of what's on offer. My advice to anyone planning a trip is to truly plan the trip. Check out the parties (using a site like Ibiza Spotlight), and pick just a few, spacing them out over your stay. I recommend the poly-sexual Matinee (slideshow) under the flight path at Space, and the heavy/hard DC-10 (slideshow) located right next to the airport!

And on the days when you're not at a party, plan a trip to somewhere remote on the island. I highly recommend Cala D'or (slideshow), Cala Comte (slideshow) for great sunsets, and the stunning Cala Saona (slideshow) on nearby Formentera (slideshow). Most important of all, find every way possible to stick to the plan. Every way possible! Otherwise, with every distraction imaginable around you, it's easy - probably far too easy - to suddenly find yourself greeting an unexpected sunrise!

All of my Ibiza photographs are on Flickr, and can be viewed in a slideshow.

Thinker Thoughts

I have always admired Rodin's The Thinker, but I was thinking today that the subject must have been incredibly uncomfortable.

I always thought his right elbow rested on his right quad. It doesn't... it rests on his left quad. Try doing this for yourself. It's bloody hard. And you know know what he's thinking, too. "Can I move yet? I'm cramping."

While contemplating the Thinker's amazing contortion ability, check out that fantastic ab definition...

Whiter Shade of Pale

Three American tourists (two appear in the photograph), one of whom was pretend-preppy, sat near me on the tube this evening. They were chatting - loudly - about the Austrian dungeon man. Of course, I pretended to listen to my Walkman, after I switched it off, to listen to their conversation.

Preppy Guy: His girlfriend was his daughter.

(considered pause)

Scruffy Guy: His girlfriend was his daughter?

Preppy Guy: Yeah, man, he locked her and their kids in the basement.

(another pause)

Scruffy Guy: Dude, they must be so pale.

Passenger Air Bridge at Gatwick Airport

Every time I pass through Gatwick Airport, I hope to travel over this giant passenger bridge. I've never seen anything like it. It's huge.

The largest of its type in the world, the bridge links the 1980s-era North Terminal with Pier 6, added in 2005. Escalators ascend passengers to the height of the bridge, and travelators assist with movement across the bridge. The tremendous height is necessitated to allow aircraft tail fin to pass under the bridge.

Oh yeah, and that's the plane that took me to Barcelona last summer.

Only In Soho

Only in Soho - London's central station of sin - is it necessary to affix a sign to the front door of a sleek townhouse, that reads:
THIS IS NOT A BROTHEL
THERE ARE NO PROSTITUTES
AT THIS ADDRESS

Storyboard from The Shining

The most curious thing happened yesterday when my e-mail account was bombarded with messages from Flickr telling me that people had commented on, or favourited, my photograph of a storyboard from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, that I snapped at the Barbican Arts Centre a few months back.

I discovered from the Flickr stats that two Kubrick sites had linked to my photograph, which might account for why this photo received 7000 hits in something like 12 hours. I'm astounded by the figure. Are there that many Kubrick fans who consult a fan site on a daily basis? Amazing!

Kevin Rudd at the LSE

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is on a whirlwind world tour. This morning he had lunch with Gordon Brown, followed by lunch with the Queen at Windsor Castle, before presenting a public lecture at the London School of Economics, which I attended. He was rather dull, dry, and monotonous - as politicians tend to be, I guess - when giving his speech... yet rather funny when speaking off-the-cuff and answering questions.

The Olympic Torch Relay Fiasco

On the day that London turned white under a few inches of snow, the Olympic torch relay came to town, accompanied by the Chinese secret service thugs in funny blue tracksuits. When I realised the torch was traveling within 200 metres of my flat, I ran down to Bayswater Road with only a minute to spare before its arrival. The photos I snapped are on Flickr, and can be viewed in a slideshow.

Spring Snow

Even though it's spring, and even though it's been a fairly mild winter, the UK experienced a cold snap this weekend, and snow fell on London. I had no idea this was forecast... so you can imagine my surprise when I emerged from Fire nightclub in Vauxhall, in the not-so-wee hours of this morning, to discover that sleet and snow was falling on London! Here is the view from my flat earlier today.

Later in the day, I walked over to Kensington Gardens and the Palace to play in the snow. All my photos are on Flickr and can be viewed in a slideshow.

Red Arrows Buzz London

The Red Arrows, in formation with four Typhoon aircraft, flew over London today to mark the Royal Air Force's 90th anniversary. The banks and bridges of the Thames were lined with office workers for this event... which lasted around fifteen seconds.

A Royal Visit

My flat is about 500 metres from Kensington Palace. This evening when I retired to the park to enjoy my Starbucks Iced Soy Mocha - a regular weekend event for me - the occasion was marked by a special visit. The heavy clap of helicopter rotors heralded the arrival of an unmarked burgundy helicopter. When landing gear appeared, and the helicopter dropped from the sky, I figured the destination was nearby. I raced to the palace wall where a police officer informed the crowd that the special passenger was the Duke of Gloucester. He was met by a Jaguar and driven about 150 metres to the Palace entrance. This photo was snapped when the helicopter zoomed off a few minutes later.

Old World Style

The thing I love about London is the mixture of old and new. In Soho there are really cool and new bars and restaurants... But you're never too far from a shop like this, a timewarp, with its 40 year old fit-out. Sam Arkus is in Berwick Street. My favourite detail is the phone number with its ancient area code.

2008 Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras

I have done some crazy things in my first 33 years, but flying to Sydney for the weekend pretty much tops the list. My flights back and forth to/from Australia over the last three years netted me enough points, as of January this year, for a "free" return flight (that still cost £250 in taxes!). And as all points have a limited life on Singapore Airlines' KrisFlyer programme, and mine start expiring in May, it seemed sensible to use the points. Having only recently returned from a Christmas trip to Oz, and given my limited holidays, I decided to make it a brief six day trip. Yes, given the 22 hours flying time each way, this meant I only had 4 days in Sydney.

I left late in the evening of Wednesday 27th February, arriving in Brisbane early on Friday morning. Following breakfast with Mum and Dad, and a morning running town around surprising my grandparents, I jumped on a flight to Sydney. When I arrived at my hotel, the Central Railway Hotel in Chippendale, I almost burst into tears. I hadn't slept in a bed for 48 hours, and this hotel room was awful. I stayed one night before moving to my friend Geoffrey's wonderful apartment in Darlinghurst, with amazing city views.

Saturday was the day of the parade, and after a morning brunch at Bronte beach, I zipped around Oxford Street taking some photographs of the various (some, freaky) people who arrive hours and hours before the event. The parade was really good this year. We watched from the Glamour Bar, which only cost $200 for a good seat, and all you can eat/drink food and alcohol all evening.

After the parade, we trekked to the showgrounds for the party, which was lacklustre this year: muddy sound, average music choices, poor lighting in the RHI, AND I (along with thousands of others) got locked out of the RHI when Olivia Newton-John did her show (Xanadu) . Very annoying. Reports of that show are mixed, and now, days later, I don't mind so much. Anyhow, you can watch it on YouTube. Cyndi Lauper closed the night with a fantastic two-song set (Same Old F***ing Story and Girls Just Wanna Have Fun), which you can also watch on YouTube.

My favourite party all weekend was Toybox at Luna Park, which I went to on Sunday afternoon. The crowd was hot and up for it, the music was light and fluffy, and the lighting was really good. I arrived late, not expecting much, and was blown away. Check out the video footage of the last song/show on YouTube; it's fantastic.

The best bit about my flight home was my last two days at North Bondi Beach. It was great to see the sun, and sunbake and swim, and also to spend some time with some friends. I milked every minute, leaving the beach less than 3 hours before my flight departed!

One Minute It's There...

In a congested city like London, how do you tow illegally parked cars in the shortest time possible, and/or when it's jammed between two other vehicles? This is the London solution. Within minutes the car is gone, without a trace.

The End of Autumn

I snapped this photo at Inner Temple, at the end of autumn 2007. That time of year can be so depressing, especially when summer time ends. This picture sums it up. The last few leaves about to fall, at a time of day when the sun should still be shining...

Spooky, Possums

A funny thing happened on the way to Moscow, and the story is worth retelling on its own. I was sitting in the front row of economy in the port-side window seat. The 767 had a 2-3-2 configuration: to my right was a well-groomed young man who was disturbingly ill. He rested his head between his knees, coughed deeply over and over, and otherwise displayed symptoms that I diagnosed as early on-set ebola infection. And all that was before takeoff. Fearing contagion, I was not pleased. And to make matters worse, he insisted upon engaging me in conversation... All before 9am.

Curiously, he mentioned in passing that he was Australian, despite having the thickest Received Pronunciation accent... which actually annoyed me, I must confess. Challenging his Australian credentials, I asked how he came to be in England. The reply was peculiarly loaded with detail: "My father is a comedian, and he left Australian in the late 50s and moved to England". I felt like I was being lead, but I didn't bite... at least not yet.

Sometime later, when the ice was broken, and we had chatted on a dozen other subjects, the breakfast was served, and I'd managed to unwittingly charm him with a (serious) request for a gin-and-ginger ale at 10am, the conversation turned to Kath & Kim. He asked me if the show was still in production (even though I had already said I had lived in London for almost two years now). I said I wasn't sure, and that the last episode I saw was the Christmas special... To which my travelling neighbor sharply interjected, "my father was in that". "Oh", I inquired, "is your father Barry Humphries". His answer was "yes".

I think it rather interesting how our brains can contemplate stuff only with the passage of time (eg was I primed to mention the Kath & Kim special), and how sometimes certain things can automatically pop into your head when a previously untested circuit is synapsed. An example for the latter is how, on learning the identity of my travelling neighbour, I suddenly remembered reading a newspaper article about Oscar Humphries, son of Barry, who had instigated a London society scandal a few years back, by writing about a brief love affair. She happened to be Tamara Mellon, financial backer behind Jimmy Choo Shoes. She was also 20 years senior to young Oscar, and married, with children. Oscar wrote about his seduction in a thinly veiled roman-a-clef for The Telegraph. (I'd love to know how that job was pitched). The article caused a huge sensation. Those who knew, knew the real identity of Ms Mellon... Whose marriage, in the real world, publicly dissolved a short time thereafter.

Anyhow, we didn't discuss all that. It seemed rather rude, though I did have to bite my tongue on one occasion in order to let politeness rule the day. What I did ask, is whether Oscar found his life was unusually interesting, or at least different, growing up as the son of a household name in two different countries. He replied firmly in the negative, and insisted that life in the Humphries household was normal, like anyone else's. Normal, relatively speaking, I am sure of that... But like anyone else's I couldn't disagree more. This strand of our conversation was moments before explaining to me that one his first jobs was as a personal assistant to Joan Rivers in New York. Impressed, I asked how that came about, and he said that Rivers is a friend of his father's. And therein was the real answer to my question. Would he have got the job without the connection? Most probably not... But then again, how is this different to a shop owner helping out a friend by employing the friend's son? The only difference is celebrity.

The flight to Moscow is almost four hours, but the time flew with our light-hearted conversation. Throughout, Oscar was polite and cheery, but what most charmed me was his acutely sharp sense of humour. Definitely "a chip of the old block", as we'd say back in Australia. And on the one occasion he used the word "spooky" to describe something bizarre, it sounded to me exactly as if Dame Edna Everage was sitting right next to me. Spooky, indeed.

Moscow

The mission charter of my 2007 travel plan was to visit really different places. Perhaps it's a communist-state thing, but the first two cities I thought of were Moscow and Havana.

I visited Moscow over the second bank holiday weekend in May, arranging to meet up with my friend Geoffrey, who flew in separately from New York. In brief, Moscow is a huge, flat, ugly, sprawling city, so large that its easy to forget that this is Europe's most populous city, with 13 million people. But the size of the city is best appreciated not long after landing at Domodedovo Airport. Located in the middle of a pine forest, we drove for more than an hour - mostly on fast highways - to reach the city centre.

To Geoffrey's horror, I booked our accommodation at the Novotel. Admittedly, it was far from salubrious, and had all the atmosphere of a well-trodden Ikea showroom, but it was spacious, affordable, and not representative of the larcenous pricing that accompanies most Moscow hotel experiences. Everyone we met on our trip seemed to be staying at the Kempinski. (Madonna stayed there once, and she being the pied-piper-to-the-poofs, everyone wants to follow her it seems.) At the Kempinski, a basic and simply-decorated twin-share room (with single beds) can be had for the reduced weekend price of €300 per night.

My tip for first-time travellers to Moscow is that you must be prepared to haemorrhage money, from the moment you pay £50-£80 for a single-trip short-stay holiday visa. If that seems reasonable, consider that a tapas-sized serve of Goulash at a cafe on Red Square cost £10 (okay, it was Red Square). But that's nothing compared to our bill for supper at the Metropole Hotel: £180 for a piccolo of Moet & Chandon, two glasses of house sparkling wine, two trays of red caviar, and one (rather delicious) tray of black caviar. We briefly contemplated joining the working girls in the lobby to pay off that one.

Red Square was our first stop in Moscow; it lives up to expectation. The square is massive, and rectangular in shape. Along one long edge is the imposing wall of the Kremlin. On the other, the beautifully renovated GUM state department store. Elsewhere in the square are Lenin's tomb, and the Cathedral of Intercession of the Virgin on the Moat. This cathedral is better known as St Basil's Cathedral, and is Moscow's enduring iconic image. So much so, it's often mistaken for the Kremlin - which is not merely one building, but a citadel - right next door. The cathedral is now a museum, and can be toured.

One of the most surprisingly enjoyable things we did was to visit the Monino Aircraft Museum on Moscow's outskirts. This was Geoffrey's suggestion, and worth every minute of the two-hour bumper-to-bumper trip in steaming hot weather sans air-conditioning. Located at the edge of a military site, Monino is an aircraft graveyard, home to dozens of mothballed flying machines. We were most interested in the supersonic passenger jet Tupolev TU-144 (nicknamed the Concordski) which is a near copy of the Anglo-French Concorde. It's a "near copy" because it's based on stolen Concorde plans. One of the design flaws of the Concordski was that it lacked the superior wing design of the Concorde. Seeing it up close, it's a wonder that it ever flew! But that might have to do with the poor condition of the plane, like most in the museum.

We also saw the Mil Mi-12; with two rotors it is the largest helicopter ever built. The Mil Mi-12 is a good example of what makes Monino so interesting Monino, that basically the Russian aircraft engineers have toyed with a variety of ingenious design concepts: swing wings, droop-noses, VTOL, double-propellers, double-wings, double-engines, tri-jets, wing tips, and nose canards to name a few. Some designs are familiar, some look wacky, and many look like they were assembled in someone's garage using scrap. It really helped to be accompanied by our tour guide, Roman, on this trip. Having been in the air force himself, he was able to give us a lot of background on the planes that we otherwise would not have learned from the simple aircraft annotations.

Roman also accompanied us on our tour of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. The history of this church is really interesting. Originally constructed in the late 19th century, it was demolished after the Revolution. In its place, Stalin intended to build the Palace of Soviets, a grand skyscraper/monument which would have been the tallest building in the world. Construction floundered early on, and the foundations were soon utilised to become a huge public swimming pool. In fact, this was the world's largest outdoor swimming pool! Roman remembers visiting the pool in his youth, and recalled how it was temperature-controlled from a geothermal source, allowing one to swim in warm water during Moscow's notoriously freezing winters. Following the fall of the USSR, there was a public campaign to rebuild the cathedral, which was achieved in 1997 at a cost of $350 million.

Another of our Moscow memories was when we attended the Bolshoi Theatre to see the Bolshoi Ballet performance of La Fille Mal Gardée (lit: The Badly Kept Girl). This is a comedy ballet, in the style of a pantomime. We had front row seats (a bargain for us at £30, even though it's much much more than what Russians would pay). This was the first ballet for Geoffrey and I, and we were both worried we might get bored, or not be able to follow the story. But as we discovered, our fears could not be further from the reality. The performances were outstanding; truly breathtaking.

Second only to London, Moscow has more resident billionaires than any other city. We didn't see any, but we did see enough Russians spending big bucks in restaurants and shops to make me wonder how people can become so wealthy in just 16 years. Right on Red Square is the beautiful ex-Soviet department store known as GUM. It's now a high-end shopping mall, and it's pretty much empty. Nearby there is another department store, SUM, that resembles Harvey Nichols, except the staff-to-shopper ratio is 10:1.

Moscow's subway is a tourist attraction in its own right. The early stations employ a variety of architectural styles - Stalinist, neo-classical, or art deco - depending on what was in vogue at the time of construction. But the first three lines dating from the thirties, and for which the network is famous, feature barrel-vaulted ceilings, chandeliers, and marble floors.

Geoffrey and I spent a lot of time in Red Square, but we never got the chance to tour the Kremlin. On the day we planned to visit, we found army barricades at every public entrance leading to the Kremlin. We later learned that this barricade was imposed by the government, without warning, to prevent a protest taking place in Red Square. On the weekend we visited - and totally by coincidence - a group of gay and lesbian Europeans had planned to hold a gay pride rights march in Moscow. However the mayor refused to grant a march permit. The protestors gathered outside the mayor's residence, where they were assaulted by the police, and the army and special forces were called out to ring the Kremlin with metal barricades and a human shield. So while we didn't get to see the Kremlin we got to see a nasty and underreported side to Russian politics. Basically, there is no right to peacefully assemble if the government doesn't like the subject matter for the protest. And in a country that has had the same government since the end of the Soviet era, and with a President who is changing laws to hold on to power, one really wonders how much has actually changed, if at all.

On my departure, I actually couldn't wait to leave the city. I'd had enough of the rich/poor disparity, and the sense that nothing is easy, yet everything has its price. Hardly anyone smiles on the public transport, which I found rather depressing. Admittedly, a lot of people don't have a lot to smile about. And I have come to realize my experience of Moscow is not so much a slight against the city, as it is the resonance of the grim, bleak existence that many are fated to live there. Still, I'm grateful for that experience, and while we saw a lot, there is a lot more to see. I will return some time in the future, perhaps when I'm better prepared for the experience.

All of my Moscow photographs are on Flickr, and can be viewed in a slideshow.

BAFTAs at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Happy Chinese New Year

Today's celebrations in the high street of Queensway in Bayswater, near my flat.