London

So after the Monkey and Mace left town I was left to my own devices to explore this amazing city on my own- I still didn't have my Ipod- Fucking Kapitan Kloss hadn't sent it over yet (more on this later) so sometimes I was a little bored. But overall I have to say I like London. I have often times described Melbourne as having a feeling of its own, whilst Sydney is more just Mega Brisbane (i.e. feels the same but with more people), well fortunatly for a home town boy like myself, London is most like Mega Sydney. Brisbane has a few old buildings and a bit of history, Sydney has more, and London has a lot. That's the real difference.

I've seen all sorts of things, every now and then having a real Wow moment as I see something that is truely amazing (the Rosetta Stone at the Mueseum, The Albert Hall, the tomb of the unkown solder at Westminster) but my absolute favorite was when I stumbled across the London School of Economics, I had taken a wrong turn down Kingsway and ended up near Australia House and the Strand, I found a random alleyway that looked a lot like a typical shopping street off Regent street so I went down, the buidlings were old (like the rest of town) but something seemed familiar about the place, as I went into a building I realised what it was, it felt like home.

Dav Ross back your bags I am working on our enrollments for the Michealmas Semester next October- We can be home by June.

My other favorite place has been St Pauls Cathedral- its a massive old school building a bit away from the rest of the middle of town. You can climb up to the coupala (?) at the top of the dome which gives a magnificent veiw of the city- its over 500 steps, but well worth it.
I'm told, the day I did it was the first day of the cursed christmas fog (more on that later) so my view was fairly limited. Still it was a nice building inside.

I like the Churches here because they tend to include Military monuments- and the best thing about English History is that it fairly closely matches Australian History. So everywhere you go their is mention of our boys at Gallalipoli or the Light Horse which makes me happy.

The only other story I care to share of pre Christmas London has to do with the amazing third day of the Perth Test (or was it the second ?) Jo Knorks and I woke early on a Saturday morning (4:30 am) and jumped a bus for the centre of town. The only place showing the Ashes live all day is a sports bar of Picadilly so that was our destination. We arrived at 6 just after lunch and settled in to watch. I was excited cause I thought Haydos would be near his ton by now, unfortunatly we arrived just after he had thrown it all away for 92. But that was all right we got to see Hussey then Clarke get their tons.

(NOTE: As I am writing this I am sitting up at 5:30 am, I have been up all night, I have finally worked out how to stream the cricket live on the web to the Pickle and have watched the amazing Aussies kick some arse- as we talk Warne ahs just got Mahmood with a flipper- All Right)

Anyways, it was a lot of fun, their were a bunch of poms (very drunk) singing all sorts of barmy army songs and having a great time. That was until Gilly got off the mark, for ten balls they were being very loud and obnoxious, then for the next 46 odd balls they looked on in amazement as Gilly did what only he can (or perhaps Viv Richards...). It was amazing, possibly the only time in my life I will ever watch a game from six am till 10:30 am, and for something as excellent as Gilly's innings to happen will make it all the more memorable.

Joe Knorks has just suggested that the most remarkable thing about the experience was having a Sambucca shot at nine in the morning, brought for us by a Scottish friend we had made, who enjoyed sticking it up his English brothers all most as much as we did.

Anyways, that just about wraps up London, some cool old buildings and history, some fairly bland areas, lots of drinking, many, many Aussies, and lots of cricket. Good Times.

London and the Monkey

So I finally arrived at 5 in the morning, on the eigth of December. Some 40 odd hours of travel. The final leg of the flight was long, but not that bad as I got to stretch out on a bigger plane. Arriving in the UK I was surprised to find how easy it was to get through customs. The box of chewable mints I had smuggled thru Brisbane Customs, into Malaysia and finally now to the last hurdle once more went unnoticed. Now sure they were just smints, but how the hell did they know that?

So leaving the baggage collection place I took the last few corners with my trolley, putting a move on a slow moving lady to beat her out of customs by a good three metres. There up ahead was the destination, sister Joe Knorks beaming with a very excited smile for the time of the morning. Strangly she was alone, my supposed friends the Monkey and Mace Windu were supposed to be their to meet me also- how strange I thought to myself.

After an excited greeting with old Joe Knorks I had to inquire, where are the Lads? well you can imagine my amusement when I discovered that they had been there to meet me, 24 hours earlier. The next 90 minutes made their fuck up even more funny as I began to appreciate how rediculously difficult it would have been for them to get up at 4 in the morning, catch a bus, and maybe a tube, out to Heathrow, only to have to turn around once more and catch the tube home. If it wasn't such classic mubleford I would feel sorry for them.

So anyways, sans a lot of the fanfare I had been looking forward to we left Heathrow and headed for the Pickle. Which is a delightful little flat on Old Street in Hackney (?) surprisingly close to the centre of town (watch for more on this topic in a later post).

Eventually we got organised, I was now armed with my Oyster Card and London A-Z - both esential items for the new Londoner. Joe Knorks and I headed for Bond street to meet up with the Monkey and Mace and as it turned out also old Stack herself. Bond St is close to Oxford Circus, which is at the head of Regent St - a popular shopping district. My first morning in London consisted of wandering around this area seeing all sorts of shops that Master Mace assured me was infact that largest of its kind in the world (i.e. thats the biggest virgin mega store, thats the biggest hmv, thats the biggest and so on) you can imagine I was amazed.

After awhile we managed to drop Joe Knorks- who apparently couldn't get the day off work... and after a couple of dodgey touristy experiences (Trafagler and Bucks Palace) we finally managed to do what I had come for, the Covent Garden Walkabout- its a great pub, snakey bees as far as the eye could see. As I settled down over my second (or third) pint I couldn't help think that they should open this type of pub back home- then I remembered- duh!

The Lads were very excited to have me in London, the Monkey couldn't wait to tell me that he was going in a week, Mace confirmed that he was out of their in 10 days, and Robbie Paul couldn't even stay at the pub for long as he had to go back to work. I was feeling loved.

Anyways, my final memory from the first day comes from when the Monkey returned to our table with the biggest jug of snake bite you will ever see- if the Walkies do one thing right its the Jugs, there not that expensive and you get a lot of beer in them- Hooray.

Anyways, spent the next 10 or so days partying hard with the Monkey and old Ned Kelley. After two years we had a lot of catching up to do, which we did well at various pubs in the hammersmith and shepards bush areas.

The crowning achievement of my first week in London was when we went to Church. The night before had been the Monkey's going away party at the Sheh Boo Walkie then back to Mace's for a night of Vodka indulgence, then the next morning, with all of 4 hours sleep we headed to Church - which I was surprised to find isn't actually a church but an excuse for Aus/Kiwi's/Saffa's to drink on a Sunday. After lining up for an hour and buying our drinks cards we finally got into what can only be described as the old Alex without the lights on the roof. Their were skantaly clad ladies everywhere, an amazingly poor relationship of males to females, and lots of people looking worse for wear. Anyways, after a couple of drinks we all began to relax a little, and found ourselves having the time of our lives. There was a camera man on a stand going around picking hardbodies out of the crowd and zooming in on their chests- delightful.

To top of the experience at the Church a bawdy British comic then came out and sang a couple of his customized tunes, and was then followed up by a stripper- jaws dropped all around. Good Times though. After Church we headed back to the Walkie for another evening of Snakey Bees- good times all round.

In a post scipt to this story I later discovered that one of the girls we went to church with had left home on Friday morning wearing one outfit- that she didn't get out of until after work on Monday- Respect to Kelly, she is truely living the dream.

The Legend of Funtheque

8:00 pm. Flight KL755 (I made that up) arrives in Kulua Lumpur and my Overseas adventure had finally started. The flight was pretty much as you would expect, got jammed in a window seat, with fuck all room. Watched the Devil Wears Prada, and a delightful Jennifer Aniston movie called The Breakup - I don't recommend either.

I was a little bit disapointed when I realised that KLIA was exactley the same as everyother airport I could remember (Brisbane, Tullamarine, and Sydney...) except for the husslers who were praying on unsuspecting tourists, selling everything from taxi rides into the city, to hotels, to passess to various KL tourists spots.

Minutes later I was in a cab headed to the Malaya hotel studying my new map of KL planning all the touristy things I now had tickets too.

9:00 pm. the Malaya, all 2.5 stars of it is located in the China Town section of KL outside of the more touristy "Golden Triangle" section of town, but thats just how I role.

Now I know beofre I left I made all sorts of claims about the rock n roll nature of not bothering to get a hotel room while I was in KL, but my good friend Harry at the airport had reasoned that I would need somewhere to keep my bags for the day I was in town - good point I thought.

So I arrived at the Hotel and headed down to 'checkout' the local area.

Anyone who has travelled with me in the past will know that I sometimes struggle to keep the surprise off my face when I am presented with new things. Well I like to think that my reaction to the Chinatown markets was pretty reserved, I was taking everything in my stride. However the reception I was recieveing from the street vendors suggests that my eyes may have been a little wider then normal.

I cruised around the markets, quickly snapping up a couple of bargains, a shirt, some sunglassess, and down one extremely dark alley some pirated porn dvd's. It was extremely exciting, lots of colour, lots of people, lots of humidity, and plentiful Tiger's from little stalls.

10:30 pm. I had had enough of the markets- really there are only so many cheap wallets you can look at- so I jumped a cab and told the fellow to take me to the coolest hot spot in town. He looked me up and down and said sure thing, five minutes later he dropped me to one of the most generic Irish Pubs I have ever seen. I was a little disapointed. I decided to start walking around looking for a bit of an unique KL experience.

An hour and a half later I had been to 10 different pubs, eaten a seafood curry from a stall set up actually on the street (although I didn't eat it all as it was too spicy), bartered with a little shopkeeper over the price of a seafood curry, had walked down all sorts of vibrant KL streets watching the locals sit at street resturants eating, and was getting a little drunk. But I still didn't think I had experienced KL culture.

12 am. As luck would have it as I was having these dark thoughts about my experiences I happened to take a random right turn and managed to find a new KL street to adventure on. As I wanded along I noticed that this seemed to be a much more upbeat section of town, more riverside then the old valley style section that I had been in.

and then I found Funtheque, some neon lights announced the name, and I thought to myself, I HAVE to go in here. So up the winding staircase I walked, with each step getting a little more excited by the pumping muzak I could here from above.

When I got there it was as good as I had hoped. Lots of bright lights, lots of hot asian babes, and a staff full of rock n rollers looking to have a good time. I sat down delighted with the whole ambiance of the place, and ordered a drink off the nice fellow who was standing next to me, he turned around and gave me a funny look which made me realise he didn't actually work there. I then found someone to actually get me a drink, when the sound came off. My face fell as I was concerned that it was closing time, but I needn't have worried.

As on stage strode 'Chemistry' - without doubt the greatest the Malay/English covers band I have ever seen. The lead singer was a smooth as glass young fellow, the only thing I can think of to describe him is the cowboy picture of Sanjeev that used to be one the set of the Kumar's at number 47. He was abely supported by two complete hot asian babe back up singers who really made the show. One was a a curvey temptress who you could tell was the more serious musician of the three, the other, made the group. She was a complete hardbody, built for speed as the kapitan would say, wearing a pink holter, a pink cheer leader skirt and the best pair of hot pink fuck me boots ever made. She had it all, watch hollywood in the coming years and I am sure she will be there at some point. They sang a couple of numbers and I was having the time of my life. They could do rock, they could do roll, they could do funk, (for some reason they also did I will survive, but I will forgive them for that), and then, just when I thought it couldn't get any better they slowed it down a little by swinging to the Keyboardist to do a soulfoul number in Malaysian.

1:30 am. With a heavy heart I realised I was running out of ringgits and my hangover from the morning before was beggining to come back, so I left Chemisty and Funtheque, but not before promissing myself one day I would return.

I went down onto the street and decided that it was time to get back to the hotel, I didn't have enough money to get back to the hotel (I thought) so I decided to strike out on a bit of a stroll, it couldn't be that far back to china town... I set off in high spirits, mentally preparing this post in my head, thinking of hilarious ways to tell you all about Funtheque. 1.5 hours later as I walked past FunTheque for the second time I realised that maybe I should be paying less attention to how funny I could be and more attention to where I was walking.

Forty-Five minutes later I had a sinking feeling in my chest, it couldn't be, there was Funtheque again. Where the fuck was chinatown???

Now I am a fairly relaxed fellow, but if you want to find out how to get me worried put me in a asian mega city at 3:15 in the morning, drunk off my tits, with only 13 ringgit in my pocket. My dogs where barking like mad, I still reaked off lasts night rum (which I had been sweating for about 20 hours straight) and I had no idea what to do next. A cabbie pulled over near by and I walked up with some trepidation, could you get me as close to China Town as possible for 13 bucks? Sure he said, two rights and a left and a little under 3 minutes later he pulled up at the Malaya, I was saved. I passed out.

The story of the next day pails into insignificance so I wont bother. I went to petronus towers, I had a walk around, I went to the aquarium (a good aquariaum), I walked around, I headed out to the airport. I sat at the airport for four hours, I chatted to Abbey Lou on the MSN, then I went to my gate.

It seemed like fate, but right next to KL2315 at gate 40 was KL2310 at gate 42. KL2315 was headed to London, KL2310 was heading home. By this time I was over the whole adventure, I could be home by 8 in the morning if I jumped in the queue at gate 42, it would all be fine.

Thankfully I was more worried about the ridicule I would cop if I turned up back at home three days after leaving then what was ahead of me so with a few deep breaths I boarded flight 2315 and headed on to London.

Leaving Home

After the dust settled from the crazziness that was the Gabba Stackathon I all of a sudden realised I had a week left before heading on the big adventure. I still had to finish thesis, pack all my stuff and find some time to go to the beach.

Thankfully I had long stopped caring about thesis, didn't really care which clothes made it into the bag, and had all ready got the tan into tip top condition. By about Tuesday then I was a little bored...

Wednesday went to the beach with Holepunch, but it was overcast. Friday went fishing with the Oldman, but got out fished by the Kapitan. Saturday had early christmas with the family, but once again Taylen the Nephew got better presents then I, and Sunday played golf with the lads, but got beaten by Tunny, and finally went to going away party on Sunday night, but it rained :(. I have vague recolections of late Sunday night, but if anyone can update me on what happened between Ashes and Cat after we finished skinning dipping I would love to know.

By the end of the week I was ready to go.


Monday I woke up very hungover, reeking of rum, still needing to a thousand errands before leaving for the plane. So by the time we got to the airport I was ill, sweating spirits, starting to get nervous about the whole thing in general, and dreading the next 40 hours of travel. It was about this time that I realised I had left my Ipod at home, my mood got worse. Thankfully Holepunch, Nylex, Embo, Kloss Dogg, Kitty Cat, and Crabby Abbey, had come to say good bye and ensure that I got on the plane.

So there it was, Gilly got out for another soft dimissal and it was time to get on the plane. As expected Kloss was the first to break blubbering like a little girl, holepunch looked a little misty eyed, but my little sisters really looked a little releaved that it was finally time to go. With a smile and a bit of a tear of my own I went through customs and was off on the adventure.