The Hits Just Keep Comin'!

In Suva, Fiji recently, going about my business and found myself in a musical worm hole.  

Fiji, it seems, is where pop music goes to die. The soundtrack of these islands is stocked with all the one hit wonders of yesteryear.  The restaurants, the bars, the groceries all wafting with The Motels, Chris Isaak and Lisa Lisa  and the Cult Jam.  

Lisa Lisa was still in heavy rotation for heaven’s sake!  I heard “All Cried Out” three times in four days.  

Yep. If you’re a hit maker of days gone by and wondering whatever became of your career, chances are your agent sold your rights to Fiji and you’re still a big star there.

And it’s not only American Pop.  It’s Hindi, too.  Got into a rough looking cab with music blaring and headed on my way.  The driver turned downed the volume on his radio.  “This music probably grates on your nerves”

“Mine? Not at all!  Turn it back up!  Is it Hindi pop?”

“Yes!  They don’t make songs like this any more!  Today’s songs, you can’t even understand what they’re saying.  It’s all THUMPA-Ticka-THUMPA-Ticka!”

“What’s she singing about?”

“Love, of course.  She says she’ll follow him anywhere.”

I guess the love part is universal.  Wanna know how you say “I’m all cried out in Hindi”?  It’s like this,...

 “Maiṁ sabhī bāhara rōyā hūm̐”

Speaking of hits,... I was hit by a bus.

Me and a friend in my little rental Corolla were waiting for a car in front of us to turn when we were rear ended by a mini-bus shuttle full of 10 unrestrained teenaged passengers.  “POW!” Totally out the blue.

It is amazing the number of thoughts you can have while your car spins around in the road.

 “Oh...My...God. I’m having an auto accident in a clearly developing country...What hit us?....  This is going to be complicated... I hope I’m not injured.....  I hope my friend is not hurt.... Can I still go fishing today?...  What are we going to eat for dinner if we can’t fish?...Why does my back hurt?

All that in half a revolution of a Toyota.

I’m fine.  My friend is fine. It is a pretty incredible feat given that the road is the major highway heavily plied by busses and trucks.  Every single teenager was fine, save for a tiny cut on one of their ankles. I swear those teenagers just kept piling out of the mini-bus like clowns from a circus car.

Sorting it out took some doing.  A traffic cop arrived via taxi cab shortly.  Took lots of measurements and drew sketches and hauled us all down to the local police station for statements and reports. The kids, we learned while waiting were all heading home from boarding school for Easter weekend.

Sign on Police room door.

The police interview room was filled with three desks and a computer.  The bulletin board covered in an interesting mix of crime trends and inspirational religious quotes. The officer wrote down my statement by hand and then hunted and pecked his way over the computer until he finished my report.  There was a printer, but no copier so we wandered next door to the courthouse which really was a small house. Their copier was unavailable.  Thankfully, I had my phone, so I just snapped some shots of the documents I needed.

The driver of the van, a commercial shuttle company, hadn’t yet picked up his license from the motor bureau yet.  Hmmm.  Let’s see if the company has insurance.

Here’s the final hit. I didn’t take the extra insurance that they’re always trying to sell at the rental agency, so I’m on the hook for the damage to my car. The very kind lady at Avis, says that because I didn’t take the insurance, I’m on the hook for up to 7000 Fijian dollars.  They’ll charge my credit card and I need to take it up with my own insurer and the credit card company about getting the money back from the bus company.  

Avis will, of course, provide all the documents I need, such as repair quotes and police reports and what have you, but the legwork is on me.  The Avis lady chided me a little bit.  “If you take the insurance, you walk away after a smaller payment amount.”

All the travel and finance people I’ve read  say, always decline the extra rental car insurance, it’s a waste of money. Your auto insurance and credit card will cover it.  This may be the case when you’re at home, but the lesson to consider is this. If you’re facing the prospect of getting your money back from Simi with his learner’s permit and his uncertainly insured shuttle bus company in a developing country 5000 miles away, it just may be worth the $12 bucks a day for the insurance.  

Something to keep in mind for the future.  I fear I may be All Cried Out by the end of this.

I'm the Honeydew Honey

There are many downsides to travelling alone.  It is not as fun when you can’t share an experience with someone.  When you come back, no one really can get an idea of what you’ve done or what you’ve seen.  It’s always nice to have someone along for the ride.

But, sometimes travelling alone opens you up to the unexpected. Running into an old colleague leads to a drink, which leads to meeting a new acquaintance, which leads to a glass of wine and then a  bottle wine and a nice dinner and then an unexpectedly great evening.  

I say all this as a caveat.  Yes, the evening was great, but the wine may have made what follows more interesting at the time.

I’m in Wellington and it’s a fairly balmy evening and after dinner I stumbled upon an alley night market with some great sounds and smells coming from down the alley. Diving in,  I chanced upon a honey guy.  Actually, it was honey kid.  He’s some 21 yo college kid studying bees and business.  School full time, business full time and beekeeping full time.  It was rather impressive.  

Anyway, Mrs. S.A.M. had given me a task.

Maybe as retribution for travelling so often, she gives me tasks.  

“Bring me the broomstick from the wicked witch of the east!”  

“Return this ring to the fires of Mordor!”  

Bring me a selection of cheeses from the pasturelands of Australia despite your lack of reliable refrigeration for a week.  

Often these tasks involve money. She once asked me to bring her a black opal, neglecting to tell me that black opals are only found in one place on earth and thus are the most expensive.   I like a good challenge though.  It’s a quest.

This trip’s quest?  A simple one. Honey.  Specifically Manuka honey grown from a type of tea tree in New Zealand. It is well known for it’s anti-inflammatory and anti-bacterial properties.

So, I found this honey guy and he’s selling Manuka honey. Great, I think.  Quest accomplished!  

Because he’s a honey geek he proceeds to tell me that this manuka honey has been tested at 180 MOG.  I tell him I have no idea what a MOG is.  He says it is a measure of something honey has and the 180 is a good number to have.

He then proceeds to give me a primer on all the honeys of New Zealand, opening jars and dipping toothpicks and letting me taste each one.  Manuka, Kanuka, clover, creamed and so on down the line.

Now here is the fascinating part ( or not so fascinating part)  He pulled out a jar of Honeydew Honey and explains that this honey is made in a rather bizarre symbiotic relationship.  There is this aphid that burrows into a beech tree in southern New Zealand.  Once it burrows there, it secretes fluid with pheromones and nectar that attracts the bees. The bees fly around the bark of the tree collecting all the aphid secretions. They go back and make honey out of it.  But the honey doesn’t have enough sugars in it to be of any use to the bees and so their hives fill up with what is essentially a waste product and the colony flies away before it starves.

My beekeeper friend collects the honey, thus saving the colony a move and making this interesting honey to sell. He tells me it’s got lots of MOGs and other mystical properties and it’s the only honey that true vegans can use because it is not a product that exploits the animals.  Who knows if that is correct.  

Again, at the time, maybe with the wine, I thought it was a pretty cool nature story.  Now, though, a day or two later? Maybe not, but at any rate I accomplished my task.

Until the next day when I checked and realized that my next stop in the Pacific won’t allow anyone to bring in honey.  So, I must spend $50 to ship the honey home in the mail. Fifty dollars! That’s almost thirty cents per MOG!

The Haircut

Looking back at my last two posts and some of the comments, I think I’m coming across as overly negative on the place. But, I don’t mean to be. I really just wanted to point out the weakness of local building codes and maybe comment on why some regulation is a good idea. We’re really pretty happy and feel reasonable safe.

I got a haircut a while back at a nearby shopping mall. Another expat sent me there. He told me they were used to foreigners and could understand English. Oh, and they use fresh razor blades with each customer. I’d been there a few times, but on my most recent visit I think I sat in the chair of the master.

I’m not sure about the language ability. I think he understood “short”, but nothing else. It was a quiet haircut and he did a pretty good job with the actual cut.

The amazing part was the massage afterward. Part of the package at this place and many barbers here, is the massage after. It’s just a chair massage of the neck and shoulders.

Now, I’ve had only a few massages, but none quite like this. This guy worked me over from behind my ears to the middle of my back. Deep tissue does not describe it. He was trying to give me a breast exam through my shoulder blades.

At the end he takes a towel and wraps it around my neck, followed by his arms. Being in a small degree of pain, I’m not really aware of what he’s doing. The he whispers something that must have been “Relax!” and then RIP!. pop...pop..pop..pop...pop. I came out of the chair wondering what just happened. Nearly all the vertebrae in my neck cracked.

Then he moved around to the other side to do the same thing, but now of course, I’m aware of what is going on and I prepare myself. “Please don’t hurt, please don’t hurt, please don’t hurt!” Sure enough, my neck cracked again. I felt half an inch taller and a great deal of energy was radiating up and down my spine.

As a finishing touch, he plucked the skin between my eyebrows and slapped his hand and I felt a last pop at the top of my head. I swear some chi dribbled down my chin.

All this for 10 bucks.

Jakarta Burning

I was coming back from the airport last week and one of the highway flyovers launches traffic into the air and sweeps south toward the city.  As we made the turn there was a solid plume of black rising into the sky.  From afar, it looked like an entire city block was burning.  I wondered about some terrorist incident as we’re all conditioned to do, I guess.  

One thing about Jakarta is they haven’t really gotten into the whole 24 hour news cycle. You can’t flip on the radio and hear second by second coverage.  TV crews aren’t out scouring a neighborhood for the edentulous of the world so they may garble a statement into a microphone.  

I asked the cabbie what was going on.  “Looks like a fire.” he said. Yep.

I read in the paper a day or two later that it was a fairly large apartment/housing area that caught fire.  It was a pretty densely populated area.  The fire started via short circuit, they thought and quickly swept through the complex. This happens quite commonly.  In some places during rainstorms, water drains out the outlets in the walls and onto the floor.  

Fire trucks couldn’t get close enough, because of the narrow streets and there are no hydrants, so they used an old fashioned bucket brigade to pull water out of the river to help fight the blaze. Given the condition of the water who knows if they helped or hindered their cause.

3000 people were left homeless. 1200 homes were destroyed. It is that densely populated. Do keep in mind that the homes were maybe the size of a dining room. 

Perhaps miraculously, only one 18 year old man lost his life.  A lot of people lost everything.  But perhaps sadder than being made homeless by a fire, I read where one man gathered his property and all his remaining belongings and sold the lot for $23 dollars and left town.  Yes, he left town with nothing but $23.00.

Four days later, we were riding to work and we came upon a 20 story building that was a total inferno right there on the city’s main street.  Flames licking up the side of the building.  Glass and metal tumbling to the ground.  There were fire trucks there and lots of people craning their necks to the sky, but no apparent water was being sprayed that we could see.  It looked like a total loss.

Many locals speculate that because it was a government building, the fire was arson in an attempt to cover up some sort of corruption. Corruption has been big in the news here lately.  The newspapers wouldn’t speculate.  The fire spread it seems, because the pump that was supposed to supply the sprinklers was broken that day, so no water flowed.  

I’m told by a colleague who watched from across the street, that they tried to extend their ladder as high as it would go and spray water, but it wouldn’t reach.  Then they tried to spray water from the building next door but it couldn’t reach.  25 fire trucks were on the site at one time and they fought this blaze for 18 hours before they got it under control.

The city of Jakarta has vowed to step up inspections of fire safety systems, saying that building owners have been far too slack for far too long.  The crackdown will begin immediately and those that are found in violation will receive a sticker.

Said sticker will be required to be placed on the front door to serve as a warning to those who may rent or use the building that the premises are not safe from fire.

Sigh….

All the talk of lack of fire safety has reinforced a fear in our youngest.  “I am terrified that something dreadful will happen to one of us and we are going to be totally screwed and we’ll die wherever we fall. I mean we're living on the ring of fire!"

Indeed all week, everywhere I go, I've found my eyes drifting upwards looking hopefully for sprinklers or fire extinguishers only to to be disappointed.  I’ve seen long hallways with an exit only at one end. Our dog searches in vain for a fire hydrant on the street. All the stuff that we sort of take for granted and ignore. None of it is there.

To be sure, I’m gonna start looking for that sticker.  

(Photos courtesy of Jakarta Globe and Jakarta Post)

Special Orders Do Upset Us.

In an odd turn of events, I found myself home alone for the weekend.  Both the spouse and offspring were away.

I wandered out into the evening in search of a meal.  Along the way I came upon two mormons.  Doing a mission trip here must have been required for some bad misdeed back at Uncle Brigham’s. I can’t imagine how hard that must be.  Fearing my own conversion, I didn’t stop to ask.  

I also saw three men relieving themselves.  Jakarta doesn’t have a lot of street lamps, so there are lots of shadows to hide in.  Just watch where you walk. That puddle may not be leftover from the rain.

Eventually I found a place called “Three Buns-Burgers and Heads”. I had only a limited idea what this meant until I asked and found out that the place is run by a group who also runs some restaurants called "PotatoHeads" 

Anyway, the set-up of the place is kind of funny .  There is a food truck out front that serves no purpose other than to handle cash and give workers a place to check their cell phones. Inside, on a series of very high risers, is the seating area.  Imagine, if you will a restaurant designed like the old “Q-bert” video game with tables and steps rising randomly and steeply around the room.  That’s this place.  Honestly, it is an alcoholics nightmare.  It was a quiet night when I was there, but I can only imagine women in heels cascading down to the ground floor in the wee hours of the morning.

There was a large grid of 36 numbers on the wall. Every so often a few numbers would light up. I asked what this was and was told it's a Bingo game. "Are people playing bingo now?" "Yes"

I looked around. No one was playing bingo.

I picked out a burger and then asked for the house fries.  The bartender started upselling me on the “Naughty fries” which looked good except for the beef chili.  I told him I didn’t really want the chili and I asked if I could have the fries without.  “Sure”, he said.  “Or, maybe you can have the chili on the side?”  

“All right. Naughty fries with chili on the side.”  

My burger came quickly along with my fries. The fries were simply and totally slathered in beef chili.

It reminded me of how hard it is to get substitutions here.  

For whatever reason, people here are fanatical about the cleanliness of their cars.  My own 10 year old car is simply flawless having been washed or wiped down twice a day.  My driver arrives in the morning and he wipes the car free of any dust that may have gathered in the closed garage over night. If we drive in the rain, he wipes down the car.  If he’s bored, he washes and waxes the car.  

Car wash/detail shops are tucked in neighborhoods all over.  A clean car is a big, big thing.

But, if you go to a car wash you have to do the whole detail.  We’ve had friends who are in a hurry and just want to rinse off the car.

“No, sorry, mister. Can’t do that”  

“Why not?”

“It’s not what we do.”

“What if I pay for a detail, but you stop after you rinse off the car?”

“No”

“But you’ll do less work and make the same amount of money?

“That wouldn’t be right.”

<scratch, scratch, scratch>

The same thing goes for pizza.  A friend wanted a cheese pizza, but it wasn’t on the menu, so they asked them to make one, but they wouldn’t because it wasn’t on the menu. They asked for the simplest pizza they had, which was maybe a margarita pizza.  They asked for a margarita pizza with only the cheese,  even agreeing to pay the higher price.  Alas, they ended up ordering a pizza and picking off everything but the cheese.

The bartender at the Three Buns told me that their format changed.  It used to be that people came to the restaurant and placed and paid for their order at the food truck and then went to sit down to wait, but people didn’t like that concept.  “Why are we paying for food at a nice restaurant when we haven’t eaten it yet?”  

The bartender said, that prepay concept may work in New York or London, but this is Indonesia. We do it our own way.  Indeed, they do.

Generations in the Year of the Goat

Secret Asian Man returned to his roots for a long weekend.  It was Chinese New year and Hong Kong seemed like the place to be, so the Mrs. and Miss and I packed up and headed north.

Here is something you don’t hear a lot of 16 year olds say.  “Wow.  It’s so nice to see infrastructure that works.  Look at all these sidewalks and lane markings and street signs and look at all the people following the rules!“

It’s about that time in our stay in our new home when we start seeing all the faults there.  Some of the ugliness and illogicality of living in Jakarta is becoming apparent.  That’s part of culture shock.

Hong Kong, for four days was not that ugly.  But it used to be.  When I was there as a child, there were still rickshaws and push carts in the street and the city was choked with diesel exhaust.  People lived on boats right in the harbor, chucking their trash overboard.  It was gritty and organic place.

40 years on the boat people have moved elsewhere.  Maybe into the myriad high rise communities or to other more distant harbors.   The streets are largely reserved for mass transit vehicles or taxis.  There  is far less trash floating in the water.

 

And still the building continues.  New bridges and buildings are going in.  A new highway from China is coming. It will be interesting to see what further changes come in the next 2 or 3 decades.

Already there are cheap flights and trains and ferries from China.  Many come just to do their shopping. One can spot them by the large rolling suitcases they tote around town

The Apple stores in Hong Kong exceed sales figures for Apple stores around the world.  Mostly, they sell to mainland Chinese.  I walked into an Apple store just 2 minutes after opening and there was a line out the door for people wanting to get an Iphone 6 four months after its introduction.  I’m amazed that they can keep them in stock.

 

I guess they make them nearby in China, so they’re easy to get.  They have Apple stores in China.  Shanghai has 3 stores, but still they come into this Special Region.  I’m told the average Chinese is worried about getting an authentic product and they think that if they get a product in Hong Kong there is less chance of it being counterfeit.  If they take it back home and sell it along with their Hong Kong receipt, they can command a premium when they resell it.  This is a weird bit of irony, since China is a leader in copied products.

Read on for a travel tip for when you go to Hong Kong.  

One of the highlights we did was going out to Lantau Island to see the second largest Buddha statue.

It is bronze and 34 meters tall.  It is run by a local Buddhist monastery.  Years ago, you had to take a ferry and then a kidney-bruising bus ride up the mountain to the monastery.   In true capitalist fashion, it is now much easier to get to.  There is a metro stop nearby and you can hop on a miles long cable car that winds up the mountain and drops you off near the Buddha’s pad.  For a fee you can climb the 246 steps and see him up close then stroll back down to the monastery for a sumptuous all-vegetarian feast.  There’s a temple for praying.  Of course, there are also gift shops and ice cream and movies and all that jazz.

It may not sound inviting, but you should go see it.  And if you go, here’s the tip.  Spring for the VIP pass.  Your gondola will be glass bottomed which is a pretty cool perk, but better yet, you get to skip the hour’s long queue to get up and down the mountain.  Seriously, it is worth the money to save your time for other things. An added bonus for us was a trip through and old fishing village and a boat trip near the Pearl River Delta to see some White Dolphins. You can thank me later for the tip.

Here’s another tip.

Don’t go during the Lunar New Year if you want to shop.  Many shops and business close down or scale back, so you’ll miss out on some of the energy of the city.  That said, if you go a little beforehand you can get some pretty good deals.

Other things to see may include the New Year’s parade and fireworks and the flower market which is like a state fair, only distilled and then condensed as throngs gather to buy symbolic flowers and plants in anticipation of the coming year of the goat or sheep.

The main reason we went was to see family.  My sibling and their family agreed to a rendezvous with some Aunts, Uncles and cousins who live in Hong Kong.  We’ve been back and forth several times since we were kids. It is always nice to catch up.  The meals we share are always a highlight even though there can be language barriers.  Someone is always around to say a prayer or translate some family folklore.  There is always a photo opportunity.

 

This is a photo of some tiny daffodils in an arrangement that is prevalent around the city.  You see it all over the place on hotel counters and restaurant bars and on family coffee tables.  It must be a seasonal thing and I didn’t get an explanation for the symbolism, but I’m sure there is. There is so much symbolism and superstition here.

 

Now here is an old family photo.  The younger kids are my grandfather and great aunt along with their parents, my great-grand parents.  Now, I know you’re looking at the dapper jacket and hat that my grandfather is wearing, but take a look at the table and the arrangement of daffodils just like the photo I took last week.

 

This photo was taken some 100 years ago which means that some lunar new year a century ago my family was gathering for a meal and some stories and photos, and now a century later, we’re still able to carry that tradition forward.

I would like an outfit like that, though.  Maybe, next trip.

 Happy New Year!

Australia Digested

Wrapped up a two week trip to Australia.

Flying down to Perth I scored a window seat and found the landscape far more interesting than the movies.   Just miles and miles of nothingness.  Rarely, you can see a road or a track scratched into the land like a line on a fresh bought Etch-a-Sketch.   Yes,  Aborigines have been here for 100,000 years,  but even given all that time,  they wouldn’t have time to see everything.  Surely, there are places here where no human has set foot.

 

Perth at night

And then rising up out of the ground are the cities of Perth and Freemantle with populations of well over a million people.  Perth is described as the most isolated capitol city in the world.  Yet, here it is clean and bustling and incredibly expensive.  Part of the cost is in the isolation, but also, the until recently, boom in mining has brought incredible amounts of money to the area.

Money and men.  Popped into a pub and found the gender ratio to be, 10 men to every woman. Maybe the ladies hang out elsewhere or maybe the 30 dollars I paid for sub-par fish and chips and a beer wasn’t enough to draw them in.

 

The entire downtown area is wired for free wi-fi and free busses circulate the city as well.  While I was there the Fringe Festival, an alternative arts fest was going on.  Maybe because the city is on the edge of the world, its Fringe Fest has become one of the world’s largest with multiple plays, performances and exhibits.

My Jakarta-honed skill of stopping traffic with the outstretched palm of my hand is rendered nearly useless and only serves to cause cars to honk and policemen to snark, “Hey, wait for the little red man to turn green before you cross.”

A week in after a few days in Sydney feeling under the weather, I took the weekend to drive the coast from Sydney to Melbourne about 1100 km.  I had 2+ days to do it.

Pastoral scene on the road to Melbourne

The drive is great.  Rolling country side. Lots of cows and sheep and trees and fields. The towns on the way are all small. This is the least direct way of going to Melbourne.  The hotels along the way are all motor inns like many in the US from days of old where you drive through a little gate and pull up outside your room.  Your window looks out over the parking lot.  The two I found were mostly clean. The owners were nice.  They had a mini fridge.  One had a sign that said, “Please don’t clean your fish in the sink.”  I was thankful for that.

The first night I checked-in and the woman gave me my key and a small bottle of cold liquid.  I looked at it totally perplexed. “It’s milk!”

“Oh,… how quaint!”  I thought maybe the area was known for its milk and maybe this was some local Aussie way of getting me off to sleep.

The second night, 400 km away, a woman offered me milk again, but then added that it was for my coffee or tea.  Ah. Of course. It all made sense. 

Melbourne along the Yarra river

My first time in Melbourne.  I think it is my new favorite city.  I used to think that Sydney was pretty great, but Melbourne has got it going on.  Though established later, it feels older than Sydney. There is more charm.  And not grimy Paris charm, but well-designed, well-aged character.  The Arts district has several  cool museums.  The botanic gardens look great.  There is food galore.  Lots of free wifi about town and a new free tram system as long as you stay in a certain area.

 

There is still a vibrant Chinatown and it is not just chatzkes,  Chinese take-out and massage parlours.  It’s actually encroaching on the Greek district.  The Greek diaspora back in the 70’s brought thousands of Greeks to Australia.  This community though doesn’t seem as vibrant, though with all the problems in Greece now, maybe it will pick up again.  The focus in this town, and indeed, throughout Australia, is China.  Chinese museum exhibits, performing arts, economic conferences. It is all looking to Beijing.

Inflatable Nude Model Drawing class at local museum

Mind you, the weather was perfect and that definitely played a role in my good time, but if you’re looking for a neat city to go explore, put Melbourne at the top of your list.

Canberra is different.  You fly around to all these squeaky clean, bustling cities and then you hit Canberra and it’s like falling into a time warp.  Carved out of the mountains between Sydney and Melbourne, Canberra is really a series of planned towns surrounding the parliament and government buildings. There isn’t much of a central city, but there is a ton of green space and parklands around. Like they put in all the public spaces and are waiting for the rest of the city to join them.  It’s all part of the grand plan, I guess.

Years ago, to get countries to build their embassies in middle of nowhere, they granted them all land if they agreed to build their embassies in the style of their native architecture.  So, wandering around one section of the town is like wandering EPCOT without the throngs of tourists and smoked turkey legs.

Overall, it’s a pretty sleepy little town, though there are a good number of places to eat.

There are some good hikes just outside of town and even in town.  I’ve been to Australia 5 times and this is the first time, I've seen kangaroos in the wild, just lying around the city park.  Actually, they don’t behave much differently than the ones I’ve seen in the zoos. Roo carcasses litter the motorways each morning.  Flocks of lorikeets and cockatoos and parrots as common as cardinals and blue jays back home seem more of the novelty.

Brisbane was my final stop.  Swung by to see an old school roommate and his family.  It is always nice to be able to feel like you picked up a conversation after being away for 5 or 10 years.   I was in Brisbane about 17 years ago and the city I arrived in this time was totally unrecognizable from  previous.  High rises and tunnels and bridges.  It was amazing to see how this place had grown.  And like most of the other places there is so much being done to get people outside and away from their cars.  We took in a couple of museums and spent some time at local swimming pool all of which were well cared for and totally free of charge.

I saw this sign.  It displays the Aussies tendancy to shorten the names of things.  Boatsman become boaties, Firemen become Fireys.  McDonald's becomes Macca's.

The equivalent to Burger King is Hungry Jacks.  I used to know the reason why but aside from the name, it is the exact same place.  Home of the Whopper.  I stopped in for a quick bite.  I got a value meal, but I wanted just water instead of soda.  I was told that there would be a seventy five cent charge for water.  The woman behind the counter said quickly.  "I know, it doesn't make sense, but it's not a prank. I don't know why it is."  Thankfully, a small soda here is still accurately small.

They haven't succumbed fully yet to the Supersize wave, though maybe it is coming.  7/11 was advertising their new slurpee size called....... The Expandinator.  For all day slurping!