Omaha, Nebraska
By · CommentsA few weeks ago I was lucky enough to get an overseas work trip to carry out a PCI DSS audit of a client and their service provider in the US. My trip took in LA and Omaha, Nebraska of all places. I travelled with Brad again from the client’s security team.
The trip started on a high note. We were booked in on premium economy on vAustralia but managed to get bumped up to Business class.
The service that you get in Business is literally, a different class. As soon as you pick up your Business Class boarding pass you get whisked through the express lane passing the long security and immigration queues. Once on board a glass of champagne is handed to you prior to take-off. Once in the air the stewardess sets up your table with white linen and silver cutlery ready for the meal. After perusing the fine choice of À la carte dishes on the menu the stewardess then brings out some warm bread and butter while you await your first course. Another stewardess brings around a selection of fine wines for you to choose from, and an amazingly nice meal begins. After the meal, the stewardess reminds you to give her a bell when you’re ready to have your bed made up, because of course, on Business you get the flat beds.
On the way out it was a day flight so for most of the journey I either watched movies or visited the bar. It was quite an experience sat at the bar, on a plane! That’s certainly one way to pass time on a 14 hour flight.
Los Angeles
We arrived at LA at 7am, roughly 4 hours before we left Brisbane due to crossing the international date line in the Pacific. Very bizarre! We managed to get an early check-in for the hotel and got our head down for a few hours before doing a bit of auditing in the afternoon.
We only had 1 night in LA and had an early flight the next morning, so that night we decided to stay relatively local and took a taxi to Manhattan Beach which was only 15 minutes in a taxi from LAX.
It was a pretty quiet night, being a Monday. We had a few beers and a meal, and later on we met up with one of Brad’s mates who was interesting to speak to. As with everyone in LA he’s a struggling actor, and when not acting he’s a tour manager – having managed the tours of such luminaries as Meatloaf.
The next day we caught a plane to Salt Lake City, Utah and then a connecting flight to Omaha, Nebraska.
Omaha, Nebraska
This was my first time to mid-west America, having only ever visited places on either coasts before. Everyone we met asked the same question – ‘why the hell have you come to Omaha?’.
The week I had in Omaha followed the usual pattern, Drinking all night and a bit of work during the day. Thankfully the client had arranged far more time in Omaha than was necessary to perform the audit so we were able to move at a relaxed pace.
We had four consecutive nights of going out and drinking until 3 or 4am. It nearly killed me. I had no problem doing that when I was 21, but now I’m 35 the years are taking their toll – and the hangovers are getting worse.
We spent most nights in the Old Market area of Omaha. This is home to a number of micro-breweries and the selection of pubs and beers is pretty good.
There’s a mistaken opinion in Europe that American beers aren’t any good. I suppose it’s easy to form that opinion if you’ve only been to bars that sell Budweiser, Coors or Miller. The bars in Omaha generally had an outstanding selection of beers, both domestic and import. A lot of the bars offered taster plates where you can get a plate of 5 small beer glasses and choose any 5 beers from the menu. We were happy to partake. All of the beers on the menu displayed both the alcohol volume and hop count so you could get a good idea how strong or bitter each beer would be before you tasted it.
I even found a few bars serving Boddingtons (in cans) and Tetley’s on tap. Bliss – the sweet nectar of draught Tetleys. The only place I’ve been able to get it in Australia as in cans at the British shop in Birkdale, or at the Pig ‘n Whistle pub in the city.
We were hardly ever on our own while we were in Omaha. I guess they don’t get many overseas visitors because as soon as we went into a bar and the locals heard our accents we were invariably joined and more often or not they bought us a round of beers. Nebraskans must be amongst the most friendly people I have ever met.
When they weren’t buying us beers, they were buying us shots. The locals seemed to drink shots like they were going out of fashion. I lost count of the rounds of Jägerbombs we had. A lot of the time the bar man would send a round of shots to our table, on the house. I can’t remember ever getting that in the UK or in Australia.
As well as having good beers, Omaha has great steaks. Nebraska has a reputation for producing some of the finest steaks from grain-fed cows in the country. I can attest that the steaks were huge, juicy and tasty. The best one we had was at Spencer’s for Steak and Chops. Not only did we get a great steak, but our waiter gave us biographical information about the cow we were about to eat as well as a detailed run-down on how it is cooked.
Packing Heat
On our final day in Omaha our hosts at the service provider I was auditing took us shooting – the favourite pass-time of all good mid-westerners.
On our way to the shooting range we stopped off at Cabelas to pick up some ammo. Cabelas itself should be on the tourist map for any overseas visitors. The place is astounding – it has everything you need to start your own war.
Our hosts brought their own guns from home which we could use at the shooting range – a 9mm and a .45 handgun as well as an AR-15 Assault Rifle.
When we got the shooting range the guy at the counter told me I couldn’t use the AR-15 rounds that I’d purchased. It turns out I had purchased the armour piercing variety and if I was to use them my rounds would go through the wall and out into the parking lot. I exchanged them for some standard .223 rounds that the AR-15 could fire.
My only previous experience of shooting was the SA-80 Rifle in the Navy, and shotguns when I’ve been clay-pigeon shooting.
It’s harder than it looks. You would think that you could just line up the sights, pull the trigger and the bullet would be directed exactly where you aim. It’s not quite that simple. On my first few attempts I was all over the place even though I was happy that i had everything lined up as it should be. Eventually though I remembered my training from the navy – controlled my breathing, stopped snatching at the trigger and fired on the exhale; and before long I was getting some pretty good clusters. The AR-15 came with a scope so it was a case of sending the target right to the back of the range. The surprising thing about the AR-15 is that it has hardly any kick for such a powerful gun.
My favourite was the .45. Now that does give off a good kick! Even though the thing made me jump out of my skin every time the round exploded from the end of the barrel, I somehow managed to score the best accuracy with it.
And that’s pretty much all I remember from my time in Omaha – drinking and shooting.
The journey back to Brisbane was a monster. I had to fly Omaha > Salt Lake City > LA > Sydney > Brisbane. Travel time was about 24 hours but with the time zone change I landed 2 days after I took off. I was in Business class again on the return trip from LA to Sydney, and it was a night flight so I gave the flat bed a try.
I have this thing that I just can’t sleep on planes, and now I’m starting to think it’s mainly psychological as even with a flat bed I didn’t manage to sleep. I did everything right on the return journey determined to get some sleep: I didn’t drink alcohol, I made sure the bed was fully made-up, I put on the blindfold and earmuffs, and I even got changed into some pyjamas they provide for all Business class customers. I didn’t get a wink of sleep.
i don’t understand it. When I was in the Navy I used to sleep through force 9 gales, live firing exercises of the .45 inch gun, and even fighter jets landing above me. Maybe it was the guilt I was feeling thinking about all those poor souls back in Economy? No, I don’t think it was that.
See more of my photo’s from this trip on Flickr.
Auckland, New Zealand
By · CommentsLast week I was lucky enough to go off on another overseas jolly (err, I mean arduous work trip). This time to Auckland, New Zealand.
I’ve never been to NZ before so I was quite looking forward to this one, even if it is the middle of winter and I new it would be freezing.
We left on Wednesday and arrived quite late. From the minute I arrived in NZ I had to work to stifle my laughter. The accent just kills me. I think I’ve watched Flight of the Conchords too many times. It started as soon as I arrived. I walked through Customs and one of the officials said “Excuse me sir, I think you’ve dropped your pin”. I thought pin, what pin? What kind of pin? What’s he talking about, I haven’t got a pin?. And then I realised – pen, I had dropped my pen. Hence me being in stitches most of the time for the duration of the trip. My favourite has to be “Would you like to sit on the dick?”, of course referring to the outside deck of one of the bars we visited, which of course came complete with outside heaters given the time of year.
On the Thursday I did my PCI DSS audit as usual, and everything went smoothly. So Thursday night was our (I travelled with Brad from the customer’s security team again) first chance to try the Auckland nightlife.
We stayed in the Quadrant Hotel in the city centre, which is a funky little place. The rooms are tiny but they make up for it by offering free Wi-Fi, so I was quite happy. Not that I spent much time in the hotel.
As usual, we had very good intentions on Thursday night. We actually spoke about it. We realised that the last few places we’ve been to, we hardly ever managed to get a good meal because we’d always get pissed and side-tracked, completely forget about the restaurant and end up in some dodgy nightclub. So this time, we were determined to get a good meal before anything else.
We decided to walk down to the Viaduct Harbour area and look for a Seafood restaurant that a taxi driver had recommended earlier that day (because of course, taxi drivers are equivalent to A.A. Gill when it comes to restaurant reviews). It was quite early (around 7pm), so many of the places were mostly empty. It was a bit early to eat so we decided to go get a drink at the nearest bar before we went to the restaurant. That was our first mistake.
Living in Brisbane now where everyone’s in bed by 9pm and up at 5am it’s quite nice to go somewhere where the nightlife doesn’t even get going until close to midnight. Anyway, that’s beside the point.
So we went to a nearby bar and had a couple of beers. We were sat inside because it was freezing and even with long sleeves on we were clearly under-dressed, warmth-wise. However, it was no warmer inside the bar so we went out on to the dick (sorry, deck) and sat by one of the outside heaters. I of course felt guilty the whole time thinking about the effect on the environment these outside heaters were having. Surely it would be more energy efficient to close the doors and heat the inside to an ambient temperature, rather than run a dozen outside heaters? A couple of beers later and my guilt had passed.
We left the bar and headed on to the restaurant. The problem with the Viaduct Harbour area and many similar places that we’ve visited is that it’s got a long row of pubs and bars, which are very difficult to just walk past. I remember thinking I wouldn’t mind a cocktail before the meal, after getting a taste for cocktails again from the earlier weekend in Singapore and the night in the Sheraton on the Gold Coast with Rach and Lauren the other week. I forgot to write about this. Basically I took a few days leave during Lauren’s school holidays and we went to South Bank on the Monday, visiting the Ron Mueck exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art, which was truly a sight to behold; spent one night at the Sheraton on the Gold Coast on Tuesday, and then took Lauren to Movie World on the Wednesday. Strangely for the school holidays, Movie World was half empty so we had no problem getting on rides. I even went on the Superman ride, which, after travelling from 0 to 100km per hour in just 2 seconds, I almost regretted. Anyway, I digress.
So we were sitting there in another bar, Brad with his beer and me with my Mai Tai (looking a bit gay, I know), and we got approached by a man and three women asking if they could join us. We were polite and said ok, but it soon became clear that the reason that they had come over was because one of the women had taken a shining to Brad. Brad let her know that he wasn’t interested; he’s happily engaged, and besides that, she was that pissed that she couldn’t even string a sentence together!
This is becoming a familiar pattern, and the main reason that we never make it to a restaurant. I don’t know how he does it. I’ve never known anyone get propositioned as much as he does. Some guys tell stories about getting propositioned by air stewardesses on flights. Well I can tell you it happened to him because I was there (Brisbane to Singapore). He also got propositioned by the receptionist at one of the hotels we stayed in; most of the bars we’ve been to; and unbelievably he even got propositioned before we even got out the taxi when arriving at our hotel in Auckland. We were sat there paying the taxi driver and a group of girls coming out of the hotel shouted through the window and asked us to go out with them on the town (clearly directing there suggestion at Brad). When we said no, they walked away but shouted out their room number to him. Girls these days hey. They weren’t like that in my day!
Anyway, we were polite and the group were really friendly, and it’s always good to have a group of locals to show you the best places to go, even if the guy was acting like a pimp most of the time trying to offload his ‘ladies’ on us. I say ‘us’, but of course I mean Brad.
Yet again, the meal was completely forgot about and we ended up in a dodgy place called Cowboys and Indians which is apparently known for its cougars. If only I was single! Just kidding Rach.
The next morning I woke up with a serious hangover. Luckily I had managed to finish my audit work early so we had some time on the Friday to do some sightseeing.
Brad has got some mates in Auckland who he worked with when he worked in London a few years ago, and one of them picked us up from the hotel in his car and took us for a drive out.
We drove up to the west coast (Auckland is on the northern island), to a place called Piha. Unfortunately, to get to Piha from Auckland you have to travel up a mountain snaking along some very, very windy roads. This wasn’t good for my hangover. I very nearly chucked!
Piha is stunning, I could tell that even though the weather was atrocious – cold, wet and heavy winds. The weather suited the wildness of the landscape; black volcanic sand beaches and huge cragged rocks protruding from the sea.
With the weather as it was we stepped out of the car for two minutes to take a a few pics and then quickly retreated back to the warmth of the car. It wasn’t long before we were back in Auckland. Brad’s mate took us to Ponsonby (funny name, I know) – one of the trendy Auckland suburbs, where we met up with a couple more of his mates and headed to the Long Room, which is one of those pubs I love with leather sofas and open log fires. We spent the rest of the afternoon there warming up by the fire and tasting some of the fine New Zealand wines. Well, only I was on the wines instead of beer because I was still feeling rough from the night before and thought, correctly, that wine would do a better job of enabling a quick recovery from the hangover.
From there, the rest of the night is a bit of a blur. We just carried on drinking. We got a guided tour of some of the best bars and pubs in Auckland. There were some pretty good ones. I remember one with cuban jazz music, with couples doing the salsa/samba (not sure – I’m not really up on latin dance styles).
All I really remember is looking at my watch and realising it was 3am and that I’d have to leave for the airport in a few hours. So I said goodbye to everyone (Brad was staying on an extra night) and made my way back to the hotel. And got lost. I seem to have a habit of getting lost in foreign cities. I’ve lost count of the amount of times, especially when I was in the Navy, of coming out of some strange nightclub on my own and trying to walk back to the hotel/ship, being too tight to pay for a taxi, and getting completely lost.
On this occasion I even asked a few doormen for directions, which they kindly gave me, and still managed to go wrong. It took me roughly an hour to get back to my hotel, for what should have been a 15 minute walk. When I did finally arrive at the hotel I had 2 hours before I would need to leave for the airport so arranged a wake-up call with reception, the guy on reception giving me that seen-it-all-before smirk. For the second night in a row I’d also somehow managed to lose the key card for my room.
So that was my first trip to New Zealand. Next stop is Los Angeles and Omaha, Nebraska of all places. Leaving on Monday.
Melbourne to Kuala Lumpur
By · CommentsI’ve recently returned from a short work trip that took in Melbourne and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This was the PCI DSS auditing keeping me busy again.
I travelled with Brad from my customer’s security team who I went to Manila and India with. He’s from Melbourne so he was quite happy to use the opportunity to catch up with family and friends. We flew down to Melbourne on Monday morning, I did my audit thing as soon as we arrived, and then at night we want for a really nice Italian at a place called Fletchers in Essendon. We met up with Brad’s mate and his mate’s girlfriend, who were really nice, and then afterwards we went over the road to the Irish pub for a few beers where were joined by his Mum and Aunty. It was a good laugh, especially to watch Brad get embarrassed when his mum started talking about the Cabbage Patch dolls he had as a kid!
The next day I did some more auditing in the morning before we caught the 3pm flight to Kuala Lumpur.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from KL as unlike with previous trips I didn’t do much research. I soon discovered KL is a very modern city, much more akin to Singapore than Manila. Very modern infrastructure. As soon as we arrived at the airport we were whisked into an aerotrain which takes passengers from the international arrivals/departures building to the main terminal.
Apparently there’s a really fast train that takes you straight into the city centre from the airport. That’s definitely the best option for anyone traveling to KL as the traffic is mad. We got a taxi from the airport but even at midnight the roads were packed as soon as we got close to the city. It took nearly a hour to get from the airport to the hotel. It was midnight when we arrived.
On the Wednesday I did my audit stuff during the day – another call centre – and when finished, Scott, the Operations Director of the client I was auditing took us out to show us a bit of KL, which of course meant seeing the sights from the perspective of the nearest bar.
We dropped our bags off back at the hotel, had a drink at the hotel bar, and then took a walk. He took us first down Jalan Bukit Bintang, which seems to be the ‘main drag’ in KL, with plenty of shops, restaurants, and also what seemed like plenty of ladies offering different types of massage. It soon became clear that many of the ladies were in fact lady boys, and it wasn’t a foot massage that they were offering! So in spite of my aching feet from a hard day’s auditing we walked on towards the Pavilion shopping mall. Inside the Pavilion there’s a row of bars and restaurants, all of which were offering happy hour. So we had a couple of beers there and then walked in the direction of the Petronas Towers.
The Petronas Towers look amazing all lit up at night. At the base of the towers there’s the large KLCC shopping mall (is it me or is South East Asia just one shopping mall after the next?), with a number of bars outside overlooking the Simfoni Lake, which itself backs on to the KL City Centre Park. The entire area is quite picturesque. The fountains in the lake not too dissimilar to the famous Barcelona Fountains, although not quite as magnificent.
After having a couple of beers at an Irish pub outside the KLCC we took a walk through the park to the Traders Hotel.
The 33rd Floor of the Traders Hotel is home to the Sky Bar. This was Scott’s little treat for us and I’m so glad he was with us otherwise I would not have known this existed.
The Sky Bar is just like one of those GQ experiences you read about. During the day it’s the hotel pool. After hours they transform it into a luxury bar. Of course the main sell of the bar is the view – it looks directly out at a full view of both of the twin towers.
Having a swimming pool in the middle of the bar is very strange. No one was swimming in it, the place is far too cool for that. The bar oozes sophistication. The lighting was just right, and so was the music, with a DJ playing an eclectic set of dance tracks, and what’s more the menu was delicious. We went for the Tapas, ordering a selection of calamari, chicken satay, samosas, etc. Everything was really well-prepared and came with gorgeous dips and garnish.
It wasn’t cheap, and at the end of the night Scott picked up the bill for the lot! Bless him. I guess that’s the beauty of being a Director working out in Malaysia but being paid in the Aussie dollar. I think he was glad of the company. All of his staff are locals, and with Malaysia being largely a muslim country he doesn’t get to drink with his staff.
We thought about going up the Petronas Towers, now the 4th tallest building in the world, but the fact is the best thing to look at in KL is the twin towers. It’s not like when I went up the Empire State Building in New York, surrounded by iconic buildings in every direction.
On the Thursday I got through the rest of my auditing, finishing mid-afternoon. We got a taxi from the office straight to the KLCC to do a spot of shopping. It wasn’t long before we were both sick of shopping so soon found ourselves in the Irish pub again playing a few games of pool.
After a few beers at the Irish pub we decided to drop our bags off at the hotel and go out and find a restaurant for a traditional Malay meal. The following morning we had to leave at 6am to catch our flight so we were going to be sensible and get back at a reasonable hour. That was the plan anyway.
We left the hotel and had a walk back down Jalan Bukit Bintang. We wandered into an undercover area following a path to what looked like a group of restaurants. On the way we got beckoned towards another bar in the midst of happy hour. This was one of those circular bars similar to the one Tom Cruise’s character tenders in Jamaica in the film Cocktail (I love that film).
The beers started flowing again, and we got talking to a couple of Aussie backpackers to our right, who were on the first night of their trip before flying off to Europe, as well as a British expat to our left, who now lives in Perth but was about to join an oil rig off the coast of Malaysia.
A few drinks later and before we knew it we had completely forgotten about our restaurant plans and instead found ourselves in a taxi with our new set of mates and the two girls from the bar on our way to a nightclub.
They had wanted to take us to the infamous Beach Club Café, but given this place was known to be frequented by many ladies of the ‘love you long time’ variety, both myself and Brad thought it wouldn’t be a good idea. We’re both getting married in the next few months and Rach for certain would perform a bobbit on me if she found out.
Looking the place up now it seems we went to a club just along the road from the Beach Club Café. There’s a street behind the Petronas Towers that’s home to a number of nightclubs. I think the one we went to was called S.I.N.
My memory of the rest of the evening is a bit fuzzy. I know we had a fantastic time. It was one of the best nights out I’ve had in a long time.
There was a really good live band on. Just like Manila it was a good mix of live music with the DJ playing dance tracks in-between sets. At one point I realised I was running out of cash so I had a walk out to find an ATM with Brad. For some reason the ATM kept rejecting both our cards so we staggered back expecting to only have enough for a couple of more beers. Shortly after getting back in the club though some random guy came and placed a large bucket of Carlsberg beers on a table next to where the group of us were dancing and told us to help ourselves. After drinking those he then went and fetched another bucket. What a fella! I realised later that he may have had ulterior motives as he seemed far more interested in making friends with the males in our group than the females. Oh well, the things we’ll do for a beer!
It’s fair to say I partied like it was 1999 (except I didn’t party in 1999 but that’s a different story). It’s a long time since I’ve been to a nightclub and stayed until the lights came on at the end.
We got back to the hotel at 4:30am. So much for the quiet night out! We never did end up having a traditional Malay meal.
I managed to get an hour’s kip before we had to leave for the airport. As the taxi was waiting downstairs I had to knock on Brad’s door and wake him up. He was in a worst state than me, he hadn’t even packed.
We got to the airport still really drunk. I was also partially deaf from the nightclub. It would be another 2 hours before my ears stopped ringing. We boarded the flight trying to appear as sober as we could.
We then sat on the tarmac for an hour going nowhere before they told us that there was a mechanical issue with the plane so we had to go back to the terminal and wait for further instructions.
We ended up being delayed for 4 hours, but in retrospect it was a god-send as it allowed us to get our head’s down on the comfy sofas in the Malaysian Air Lounge. It’s the first time I had been in a lounge for one of the international airlines and it’s a shame that I was dying, because the facilities are amazing. A buffet with a good selection of hot and cold food, a well-stocked bar including champagne and spirits, relaxation rooms, putting room (yes, a room to practice your golf putting) and other features, all free! Unfortunately, we were in no condition to make the most of it.
I finally arrived home shortly after midnight on the Friday night / Saturday morning. After only having 1 hour’s sleep in the past 48 hours I felt like a zombie on Saturday.
It was a short but memorable trip.
When I was in the Navy one of my biggest regrets is that of all the fantastic places I visited, I would often only travel as far as the bar closest to the port. Since leaving the Navy I’ve tried to make up for that by taking Rach to New York, Rome, Barcelona, etc where we’ve done the complete tourist thing.
With these work trips I seem to be regressing.
See more of my photo’s from Kuala Lumpur on Flickr.
D-Day
By · CommentsIt’s decision time. Millions of voters are now heading to the polls in the UK to cast their vote. Many of us expats have probably missed out on voting because the postal vote system doesn’t allow enough time to register and then get our vote off from the other side of the world.
It’s been an interesting few weeks in the election campaign and tomorrow could be even more interesting. In fact it could be chaos if it’s a hung parliament as the polls suggest.
Since I’m too young to remember the last hung parliament in Britain it’s interesting to see the process and the various scenarios that may play out.
A Well-Hung Parliament
If it’s a hung parliament the ball is in Gordon Brown’s court. He could choose to stay on as PM and try and form a minority government. That looks unlikely to happen though based on what Nick Clegg has been saying. Nick Clegg has indicated that he would support the party with the biggest mandate, and as he’s in favour of proportional representation you could guess that he means the party with the most number of votes, not necessarily seats. So surely that means he would support the Conservatives if the election turns out as the polls predict.
It may of course be likely that the Conservatives get the largest share of the votes and the largest number of seats, but not enough seats to get a majority. In this case surely GB would step down and the Queen would invite David Cameron to become PM? The problem will then arise when the Conservatives want to push through their legislative programme in the Queen’s Speech. If they don’t have a working majority of votes to pass the legislation they could get a vote of no-confidence from the other parties, in which case we may be looking at another election.
The magic number is 326 seats. However in reality the Conservatives could get a working majority with 310 seats if there are a number of Independents, and Sinn Fein have stated that they won’t take their seats. Plus the DUP is expected to join the Conservatives in a coalition if required.
The Ups and Downs of an Election Campaign
The election campaign has been fascinating to follow. I’m one of those geeks who likes to read the manifestos and watch each of the leadership debates (which only re-affirmed my previous choice of party).
The overall story of the election campaign is surely the demise of Labour. They must be due for a good kicking in the election? Bigot-gate was a funny development but I don’t think it’s made that much difference to the polls.
The first television debate was certainly a tipping point in the election. Who would have thought before then that the Lib Dems would poll as high as Labour? Nick Clegg certainly did well to cast his party as a complete alternative to the two ‘old’ parties. It looks like many people were convinced. It seems many are less convinced now they’ve delved into the Lib Dem policies!
The polls from the third leadership debate gave it to Cameron but I wasn’t so sure. I was left disappointed by his failure to answer some of the questions, which is a strategy usually more akin to GB than DC. It must have been a tactical decision to avoid direct questions from GB as I knew he had answers. I’ve heard him directly answer the questions in other QA’s about regional development agencies and child tax credit, etc, and give a good rationale to the policy decisions, so I couldn’t understand why he avoided directly tackling the accusations from GB.
The online YouTube/Facebook debate gave Nick Clegg a clear win. Not surprising really, the demographic of facebook and youtube was always going to be more advantageous to the Liberal Democrats. They’re the rebel party; the party of ideals. I’m all for idealisms but sometimes you have to mix that with a little pragmatism as well. Proportional Representation (PR) is a good example of why pragmatism should sometimes come ahead of ideals.
Proportional Representation
It’s the ultimate democratic method of voting, but paradoxically leads to the most undemocratic governments. Countries with PR tend to go through governments like Manchester City goes through managers. Coalition governments are the order of the day which invariably means deals done behind closed doors and no strong policy decisions.
I think David Cameron has the best idea. Keep the first past the post system so that the link between MPs and constituencies is maintained, but change the size of the constituencies so that all constituencies have an equal proportion of the overall vote. That way the proportion of seats will equal the proportion of the vote, and there wouldn’t be the situation we have today where Labour could get less votes but still have a majority of seats.
The polls close at 7am tomorrow our time so I’ll be up early on my day off watching with interest,and hope of a new team in charge.
Home Sweet Home
By · CommentsIt’s now been just over a month since we moved into our new house, so yes, since the last post things did work out ok in the end.
We managed to get the house in Alexandra Hills that we liked. Apparently there were 6 other applicants so we did quite well to get it. The effort we made to put in the best application possible definitely paid off.
After we moved in, we then had a battle to get our out of pocket expenses back from the estate agents who had messed us about with the Manly house. At first they only wanted to cover half of the expenses but we stuck to our guns and they eventually came good.
Anyway that all seems like ancient history now. Better to look forwards than backwards.
We’re loving the house. For the first time we’re living in a rental where we can actually make changes, decorate and hang our pictures. You wouldn’t believe what difference it makes. We (or should I say Rach) has already decorated Lauren’s room, with Lauren choosing the colours and design. Needless to say it’s predominantly pink!
The house is roughly 20 years old so there’s a few issues here and there but the estate agent and owners are working through them for us.
A brand new challenge for us is pool maintenance. We ignored it for the first couple of weeks, by which time the pool had turned completely green due to algae. So we got the owner round to show us what to do. After he showed us what’s required I thought sod that. Now knowing the time and effort required I quickly decided we’d ‘get a man in’. Unfortunately for Rach the pool boy who turned up wasn’t quite what she had in mind. It’s going to cost $80 a month to have the pool maintained but time is money and all that. Same goes for the garden. If it was just mowing a lawn then I’d happily do that myself but our new house has got quite a bit of landscaping, and seeing as though most of the time I can’t tell the difference between a weed and a plant I’ve decided to outsource that as well. Yes, I really am a lazy arse.
So this house is costing us a bit more than originally planned. Plus, it’s further away from work. It’s about 1 hours and 20 minutes door to door. It’s all worth it though.
Lauren is loving her new school so that’s a big relief. We hated having to move her again but she never really settled at her last school and she’s already got a better set of friends than she had before, so she’s quite happy.
I think we’re going to enjoy it here. Then again I said that this time last year when we moved to Wakerley.
Trials and Tribulations in the Rental Market
By · CommentsWe’re moving out of our house on Thursday. The only problem is we haven’t yet got a home to move to.
Things were great with our current house to begin with. We’re a short walk away from a park and our house backed on to woods so we could wake up to the sound of Kookaburras in the morning.
Then a few months ago we were suddenly awoken by the sounds of bulldozers. The woods across from our house has now gone and is being replaced by an estate compromising 62 houses. The noise is horrendous from 6:30am every weekday and even some Saturdays. Not only that but we’re getting a constant stream of dust coming into the house from the construction site. It’s not good.
Our rent came up for renewal so we decided it was time to move again. It’s not just the construction site that’s the problem. I haven’t been able to get ADSL since we’ve been here so I ended up getting Satellite broadband, which is only any good when we’ve got clear skies, and it’s not cheap. Trying to run an internet business from home with an unreliable internet service is not ideal to say the least. We’re also in poor signal area to use 3G broadband. Rachelle has now given up her job and works for our business full-time so it’s particularly important that we’ve got a good connection.
So we made the decision to move out and found a fantastic house in Manly. It’s a bit smaller than our current house, only having 2 bedrooms, but it’s only 200 metres from the water (Moreton Bay) and close to Cambridge Parade which has a good selection of quality restaurants. We applied, got accepted, lodged a deposit and signed the Tenancy Agreement. All set to move in this Thursday.
On Thursday afternoon we received a phone call from the estate agent to inform us that the owners of the house we are moving to have changed their mind and now want to move into their house. Some story about the husband having an accident in India leaving him paraplegic so they’ve decided to return home to Brisbane and live in that house. Whether it’s true or not I don’t know. If it is, I’m truly sorry for being so cynical and I feel for them, but I don’t understand why someone who’s paraplegic would want to return to a 3 storey townhouse. It all sounds a bit fishy to me.
So begins the nightmare. We’ve signed a tenancy agreement and given notification to leave our current place, so legally we’ve got a signed contract that’s binding which allows us to live in the Manly house for the next 6 months. We spoke to the Residential Tenancies Authority (RTA) who administer the Residential Tenancies and Rooming Accommodation Act, and who have powers to resolve disputes and issue fines, and they confirmed we’re legally in our rights to take up the residency.
The thing is, the owners have the keys, not the estate agents, and if we did move in they could kick us out again in 6 months time, which being 3 weeks before we get married would not be the best of timing. So we’ve been madly looking for somewhere else. The problem is compounded by the fact we have no option but to move out of our current house on Thursday as since we gave notification to leave, the owners signed a tenancy agreement with someone else.
We crammed in as many viewings as we could this weekend and have found a house we love in Alexandra Hills for which we’ve lodged an application. Fingers crossed, but with the rental market the way it is at the moment we’ve got a lot of competition for the house. We’ve pulled out all the strings to provide the best application we can, including a cover letter selling why we’d make great tenants, great references, more than the 100 points ID, full records of our previous rental payments and good inspection reports, etc. Of course, our competition could have done exactly the same. We should find out tomorrow.
Even if we get the house, it’s not available until the 1st April. Luckily some friends have offered to put us up but we’ll have to move all our stuff into storage for a few days. We’ve told the estate agents of the Manly house that we expect the owners who have messed us about to cover any of our out of pocket expenses, including storage costs and the extra removal costs moving our stuff from storage to the new house.
We’re currently up to our necks in boxes packing for the move. This should be an exciting time, moving into a new house. Instead, we’re completely demotivated because we have no idea where or when we’ll have our own house again.
How to Deal with Overzealous Cops
By · CommentsThere’s been lots of reports in the news in the last couple of years of how UK police are using section 44 of the Terrorism Act to stop peaceful protests and anything else they don’t like.
The video below is a great example of how to deal with overzealous police. The bottom line is KNOW YOUR RIGHTS!
The ‘Love Police’ dealt with this situation perfectly by knowing the law and understanding the extents to which the police can exercise their powers.
Fair and Balanced?
By · CommentsWe’re getting closer to General Election time again in the UK and as I’m still a British citizen and eligible to vote, my interest in British politics remains. Don’t ask me why, I just can’t seem to switch it off.
With Twitter, Google Reader and iphone apps providing an ever constant news feed, being on the other side of the world no longer means that we expats are out of touch with events in the motherland.
With the election looming ever closer it’s interesting to see how the media is reporting political stories and portraying the three main parties. Very few of the newspapers or TV networks can honestly claim to be non-partisan but at least they make the pretence of being fair and balanced. Some manage it more successfully than others.
So it’s been particular interesting this week to see the reporting over Lord Ashcroft’s admission of his non-dom status.
As expected, the unashamedly left wing papers have made a big thing of it, covering the story on the front pages. And then there’s the BBC.
I hold the BBC in high regard. The BBC news website is always the main source of international news for me. It generally has high editorial standards and, in most cases, can truly claim to be fair and balanced.
I am aware, however, that the BBC gets a lot of stick and is continuously accused of being too sympathetic towards Labour. I remember reading My Trade: A Short History of British Journalism by Andrew Marr who tacked this accusation by saying BBC editorial policy per se is not biased towards Labour, it’s just that the BBC happens to attract a lot of left-leaning journalists so there ends up being a de-facto bias towards Labour. Or words to that effect.
So with a strong editorial policy you would hope that any inherent bias in a story would get a re-write by the editor before being published, and when it comes to political stories, you would hope that the editing would be top-notch particularly when the political parties have started campaigning for election.
In the case of the Lord Ashcroft story the editorial policies have clearly failed. Why haven’t the BBC put equal emphasis on Labour’s Lord Paul and other Labour peers who are non-doms and large donors to the Labour party. Same goes with the Lib Dems. Lord Paul has even reportedly stated that he would rather give up his seat in the Lords than change his non-dom status.
Some of the BBC stories have been quite misleading and the reader could be led to believe that he’s been avoiding paying any tax for the last 10 years and completely props up the Conservative party, which simply isn’t true. He’s paid tax to the Inland Revenue on his UK earnings, he probably will have paid tax to another country on his oversees earnings (as most countries have a double-taxation agreement in place with Britain so that those earning income in the UK and overseas don’t have to get taxed twice on the same income), and furthermore his contributions to the Tories have accounted for less than 1% of donations this year.
Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, has accused Michael Ashcroft of being unpatriotic. The same Michael Ashcroft who formed Crimestoppers, has raised millions for Help for Heroes and many other charities; and donated his Victoria Cross collection to the Imperial War Museum. That doesn’t sound unpatriotic to me.
At least the BBC are 100 times more fair and balanced than the network that has Fair and Balanced as its byline – Fox News.
If I was American I’d be embarrassed to have Fox News as the country’s biggest cable news network. This is a ‘Fair and Balanced’ news network that employes Republican governers, takes every opportunity it can to label Obama a marxist or communist, and even goes as far as organising rallies against government policy (the Tea Party rallies). Aren’t they supposed to report the news not make it? Fox News is akin to the Völkischer Beobachter – the newspaper of the Nazi Party.
Manila to India
By · CommentsI’ve recently returned from a work trip which included my first ever visits to the Philippines and India.
The purpose of the trip was to carry out a PCI DSS audit for one of my clients. As is the way these days my client has outsourced their call centre to a company in Manila, and have also outsourced some application support to another company in New Delhi, India. The thing about PCI DSS is that if you outsource work, you can only be validated as compliant if your service providers are also compliant, which is what I had to check.
For a change I wasn’t traveling on my own this time. Brad from my client’s security team came along with me. It actually worked out quite well as he, like me, likes a beer (or two) so we got on great. The only problem was he’s an Arsenal fan 
We left Brisbane on the Monday morning and flew to Singapore. We had a couple of hours at Singapore Airport and then flew to Manila. Singapore Airport has got to be one of the best airports in the world. With free wi-fi and xbox 360 the time can really fly!
The first thing I noticed about Manila was the traffic. It’s by no means the first country I’ve visited where traffic laws seem to be non-existant but it was still a sight to behold. Talk about everyone for themselves. Surely if someone just sat the country down and explained to them that if they only followed a few basic rules of the road they would all get to their destination a lot quicker.
The second thing I noticed was the security. As well as seeing police on every corner I was surprised to find that to enter our hotel, the Holiday Inn, we had to pass through a metal detector. It wasn’t just our hotel it was like that everywhere. Not just the hotels but the Malls as well. And boy are there a lot of malls! As well as the metal detectors pretty much all of the shops had guards on the door, many of them armed. It was a bit disconcerting walking into Starbucks with two armed guards on the door.
I really wasn’t expecting that level of security everywhere. After all the Philippines is predominantly a Catholic country so hasn’t had the problems that other countries in the region have had such as Indonesia. I questioned one of our contacts in Minala about the situation and he just answered “Well, it’s an election year”. Reading up on it now I see that the Philippines has had a history of trouble with militant groups so the heavy security everywhere is an effort by the Government to remove this threat. The policy seems to be working.
Work-wise the Manila visit ended up being a waste of time. The first thing I have to do when I start an audit is to properly define the scope. The scope for a PCI DSS audit in simple terms is any system that processes, stores or transmits cardholder data. However, it’s not quite that simple. What many of my clients have trouble understanding is that I may have to include other systems within the scope of my audit that have nothing to do with processing credit card data, if those systems have not been completely separated, at a network level, from the systems that are in-scope. It’s got to be proper network segmentation which usually means using a firewall to control traffic between networks and network segments. As an auditor I can’t just take their word for it, I have to do a physical inspection of the network and firewall configuration to verify that they have indeed separated their cardholder data systems from the rest.
So this is usually the first thing that I check. This sets the scope for the rest of the audit. If everything’s properly segregated then I may only have to look at a couple of systems. But if they haven’t implemented network segmentation then their whole network could be in-scope and I could choose to sample as many systems as I like. When it comes to sampling it all depends on what confidence I can get that they’ve secured their systems in a standardised way to the same level. For instance, if they’ve got 50 PC’s that they all build with an identical image and they apply the exact same security to all 50 and the users haven’t got rights to change any of the settings, they I may only need to sample one PC. On the sample principle, if they build all their PC’s, servers, routers, etc independently with different settings then I may need to choose a large sample.
I always try and warn clients about the rules regarding scoping and sampling as I often end up having a battle when I tell them I need to audit a system that has nothing to do with processing credit card data.
Anyway… The reason the Manila visit ended up being a waste of time was because their security team at their US headquarters had a problem with me looking at their firewall and servers. Not sure what they had to hide. They had plenty of advance notice of our visit so I really don’t know why the issue couldn’t have been sorted out before I arrived. We spent two days waiting while the local Managers in Manila tried to negotiate with the team in the US to allow me access. We even put our flight out back 24 hours to give them more time but in the end it still wasn’t sorted out. I did what I could so the trip wasn’t a complete waste of time. I audited some areas which I knew would definitely be in scope whether I looked at the firewall or not. But in the end no firewall access means I couldn’t determine the scope which meant I couldn’t complete the audit.
In the mean-time while this was all going on we had a couple of cracking nights out in Manila. The nightlife there really is quality.
The first night we just went out to a local restaurant called the Banana Leaf, where, as the name suggests, you eat your meal off a banana leaf. After that we went to a local bar which had had some live entertainment. After a band, a group of women calling themselves the Mucho Girls came on. They were like a Filipino version of the Pussycat Dolls. And you know what, they were really good!
The second night we had out in Manila we went to the Hard Rock Cafe. This is a bit of a thing for me going back to my Navy days. Whenever we were in a major city around the world we always headed for the Hard Rock Cafe. Don’t ask me why.
Unlike most Hard Rock Cafe’s I’ve been in around the world this one wasn’t full of shit-faced sailors. What it was full of was middle aged and older men, mainly Americans, with young Filipino girls that they had purchased for the evening/day/week, or in one case according to a guy Brad talked to, 3 weeks. It was all a bit sad really. We were just happy to play pool.
There was one thing about Manila, and the Manila Hard Rock Cafe was representative of this, that set it apart from all the other places I’ve visited in the world – namely the amount of staff. Being the 12th most populated country in the world there are a lot of people, and in Manila they seem to go out of their way to give as many people as possible jobs. Unnecessarily so in many cases.
Wherever you go in Manila there seems to be more staff on than really necessary. You go into a shop and there’s often more staff than customers. In hotels and office buildings there seems to be a porter in every lift. In the office buildings I visited there were not only guards on the building reception but there were also guards on the entrance doors to every floor. Now this makes for great customer service. Sometimes it can be a little annoying though, like in the shops when you’re browsing (the exchange rate makes Manila a great place to shop) and the staff, thinking they’re being attentive, follow you around everywhere and stand at your side when you’re looking at stuff. If you reach to take an item of clothing off a rack, for instance, they’ll try and beat you to it so that their customers don’t have to go through the indignity of having to take clothes off of a rack themselves. It’s all very bizarre. They must be the friendliest people in the world though. You lose count when walking through a mall of how many times you hear “Hi Sir”, “Hello Sir”, “Good Morning Sir”.
In the case of the Hard Rock Cafe, this over-staffing issue resulted in us having our very own guy to look after our pool table. We didn’t ask for him he was just assigned to us as soon as we started playing pool. He’d rack the table for us. If the white went down he’d retrieve it for us and replace it on the table (I was slightly disappointed he wasn’t wearing a white glove and didn’t inspect and dust the ball each time before replacing it), and each time we needed a drink he’d happily go off to the bar to fetch us another. This was all to easy. All, I should say, for less than $1 AU a game.
About 12 pints later when we realised we were struggling to hit a ball straight we went through to the other room to have a meal and watch the band.
When we were playing pool there was this great band on TV. They were doing cover versions of Black Eyed Peas songs and other recent hits. They were that good that at first before glancing at the TV I didn’t realise that they were a cover band. It took me ever longer to realise that the band on TV were in fact playing in the room next door. I’m a bit slow on the take-up these days.
So we went through and had something to eat. The band went off and then who should come on stage… none other than Manila’s very own Mucho Girls. They were following us!
The next day I felt very ill. Before you think it was really unprofessional of me going out drinking when I’m working the next day, in my defence we didn’t have to start work until the afternoon. None of the staff were available to speak to me before the afternoon. I think they must be working on US time or something to align with their US counterparts but they started work in the afternoon and worked through until really late.
At first I thought I just had an hangover. I had stomach cramps and the runs and just presumed it was something to do with the lake of beer I had consumed the night before. When I was still the same 24 hours later I realised it probably wasn’t the cause of the beer. I was ill for the rest of the trip and then some.
We left Manila on the Friday and headed to Singapore for the weekend. The client very nicely put us up in Singapore for the weekend so we could fly straight to India ready for Monday.
As soon as I got the hotel I went straight to bed as I felt awful. I still had stomach cramps but then I started to get cold sweats. I couldn’t get warm. I had the air-con turned off (it was over 30 degrees and 100% humidity) and the quilt doubled over on top of me but I couldn’t stop shaking. I finally got off to sleep and woke up the next morning feeling a little better. Through the night I had sweated that much that the bedding looked like someone had soaked it in a bath and then crumpled it up in heap on the bed.
It was nice to have the Saturday to chill out and not do anything. I was determined to not let the side down and get myself right so I could have a night out with Brad that Saturday night.
Before the trip, on the advice of the client, I had been to the Travel Doctors to get a load of shots (6 in all) for India, and they also gave me a ‘Gastro pack’. This is basically a travel pack containing anti-biotics, re-hydration tablets, etc and a travel health booklet. I took a few tablets through the day and just drank water, and come the evening I felt much better. There was no way I was going to miss a night out in Singapore.
To start the evening we did the touristy thing and headed to the Long Bar at the Raffles Hotel for a Singapore Sling. I had been to Singapore with Rach and Lauren before but having Lauren with us we never made it to the Long Bar.
I must say I’m not usually that bothered about cocktails but the Singapore Sling tastes amazing. We had two of them, although when we got the bill we had a bit of a shock. $24 each, i.e. per cocktail!
We then took a rickshaw down to the Riverside – Clarke Quay and Boat Quay, where there’s a large collection of riverside restaurants and bars. The poor guy sure worked for his money cycling with us two on the back. He had a right sweat on by the time we arrived. He also tried to charge us a fortune for the privilege. We haggled him down to a reasonable price but it still would have been cheaper getting a taxi. We also looked like a gay couple on the back of the rickshaw being given a guided tour of Singapore!
We started off at a pub and watched a bit of Premier League footie, and then chose a Japanese restaurant to get some scran. The food was great but I couldn’t eat that much as I still felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach.
In hindsight drinking alcohol while I was still clearly ill and after taking anti-biotics wasn’t a good idea. The next day the runs had returned.
We had an early evening flight to India on the Sunday so went for a whistle-stop tour of Singapore on Sunday afternoon to take a few pics.
I really like Singapore. It’s not as cheap as the Philippines, Thailand or other parts of South East Asia but you also don’t get any of the traffic chaos and you don’t risk damaging your digestive system when you go for a meal. In fact, they drive better in Singapore than they do in Brisbane. It’s all very civilized. The strict health and safety laws in Singapore also means that all of the restaurants and other food retailers must display a health certificate grading it from A to D.
It was a little bit different to New Delhi, that’s for sure.
It was my first time in India – my only prior knowledge of India mainly from watching Slumdog Millionaire. I know Slumdog Millionaire was mainly set in Mumbai but that film made it look like paradise compared to what I saw.
Immediately from arriving at the Ghandi International Airport I knew we’d be in for a culture shock.
We had been assigned a driver by the company we were visiting so on exiting the Arrivals lounge we looked for our names amongst the huge group of signs being held up by other drivers. We slowly walked past them all but couldn’t see our names. We hung about outside for a while figuring he might be running late and every now and again went and walked the line of drivers holding signs to check we hadn’t missed ours.
We thought about just getting a taxi but when I went to try and find the taxi rank all I could find was mini-cab drivers. I couldn’t find any official taxis or even taxi rank like you get in most city airports.
After a while a couple of Indian guys approached me and asked if I needed help saying they had noticed that we’d been waiting ages. Obviously I was a bit wary of a couple of strangers approaching me out of the blue for no good reason and held on tight to my luggage. Well, you hear stories don’t you! They were actually really friendly. They told me they were Australians and advised me never to get one of the mini-cabs as you never know where you might end up. They also told me that our driver might be waiting for us at the other exit. What! There are two exits! I couldn’t believe it. We had been waiting about an hour by that time without realising that there was a second exit. It was also well past midnight.
We toddled off to the other exit and sure enough our driver was there holding the sign. He didn’t look very happy. We realised later in the trip that that was just his face. As we approached him he put his hand out so I reached my hand out to shake his hand but what he was actually doing was reaching out to take my bags. I did feel like an idiot!
It took nearly an hour to get to our Hotel which was in Noida, an industrial and business area north of New Delhi, chosen for the proximity to the company I was visiting. As it was dark I couldn’t really see much of our surroundings.
We stayed at the Park Plaza Hotel in Noida. The hotel was really nice, as nice as any I have stayed in. I can’t quite say the same about the location though.
When we arrived at the airport the first thing I noticed was that the visibility in the terminal didn’t seem quite right. It seemed really smoky. I couldn’t really smell smoke but there was definitely something in the air. I presumed it was just smog that had infiltrated the airport terminal. Again when we got to the hotel the hotel also seemed to be full of smog. This time it did smell more like smoke though.
The next morning I woke up and opened the curtains to get my first proper glimpse of India and the result was nothing. Zero visibility. It was like a thick cloud had descended and smothered the entire city. I presumed this was really bad smog. With a population of 12 million in New Delhi I was half expecting it.
I was wrong. Later in the day it started to clear, and I spoke to our hosts who told us that it was fog. It happens every year in that region of India about the same time. The smoky smell I was getting in the hotel was just due to the fact that it’s not a non-smoking hotel. They don’t even have any non-smoking rooms. Every morning that week there was zero visibility until the fog cleared later in the day. It’s a good job we had evening flights as all planes were grounded in the morning.
When the fog eventually cleared this is what I saw out of my hotel window:
Not exactly the Taj Mahal.
Although the hotel was luxury it was quite a shock to find it was situated smack bang in the middle of a residential area.
As we left the hotel to head to the office the sights and sounds were overwhelming.
On the sides of every road were tents and corrugated iron shelters housing people. Many of these were across the road from relatively wealthy homes. The contrast between rich and poor living side-by-side was startling. People seem to do everything at the side of the road. They live at the side of the road, eat, sell goods and inevitably shit and piss at the side of the road. We lost count of the amount of people we saw happily taking a piss at the side of the road.
Besides the road-side dwellings there were also plenty of slums that seemed to sprawl all over the landscape.
The roads were also an experience. We thought Manila was bad but that was nothing compared to India. At least Manila had things like traffic lights, even if most people ignore them.
The roads were full of potholes and no one stuck to a lane. In most cases there weren’t any proper lanes. The traffic pretty much crawled everywhere. Every now and then we’d get going and then we’d suddenly have to stop for a cow in the middle of the road. Every time we did stop we’d get old ladies or kids, no older than Lauren, running out tapping on the car windows begging.
I really felt awful. I wasn’t sure whether I should give something to them or not. The driver made a point each time we left the hotel or office of immediately using the central locking to lock all the doors and made sure all the windows were fully up. Much like Manila, security in Delhi is taken very seriously. I couldn’t help feeling guilty all the time I was there. Seeing all that poverty really puts things into perspective. In Britain and Australia people moan about being poor but even the poor have a proper roof above their head and get at least 2000 calories a day. The poor in Britain and Australia just have to shop at Netto (just kidding).
So was this a life-changing experience making me want to give up my capitalist materialistic ways? Maybe for a couple of days… and then I saw the Apple iPad announcement!
Throughout our trip there were regular power cuts. Both at the hotel and office there were regular power interruptions. The office had their server room on a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) as is normal for most companies, but they didn’t extend this to the office environment. I’m surprised half of the equipment isn’t fried. We had a morning of repeated power cuts in Brissie a few weeks ago which has resulted in knackering our fridge/freezer and our DVD player.
On our first evening in India our hosts took us out for a meal. We went to a place called the Kebab Factory. My stomach was still in a precarious state but when in Rome and all that. I could hardly go to India and not have an Indian meal. There are two choices on the menu at the Kebab Factory – Vegetarian and Non-Vegetarian. Being a carnivore I chose none-veggie. The way it works is they bring you out a starter to try, and then another one, and then another one, and so on until you’re about 20% past full, and then they start on the main courses. Pretty much everything was spicy, ranging from warm and tingly to Nuclear.
It wasn’t even my first curry of the day. When it came to Lunch at the office I was auditing, our hosts led us into a room where a chef had prepared a small curry banquet just for us.
Normally I would love this. I do like a good curry but by this time I’d already had a good 4 days of running to the toilet. I ate it, I didn’t want to offend our hosts after all, but with every mouth-full I was dreading the impending explosion in my bowels.
The curries in India are not like the ones I used to eat in the UK. Some of the curry houses in Australia are a bit closer to the real thing. The main difference seems to be the sauces. They don’t use so much of the thick gravy sauces like you get with the traditional British curry.
On our second day in India (Tuesday) we had a day off due to it being Republic Day. Incidentally it was also Australia Day; a public holiday for pretty much the same reason (independence from the colonial masters).
We was hoping that we might be able to make it into Delhi for the parades. We had no chance though. The security was really tight. We would have needed to have booked tickets week in advance. We couldn’t get anywhere near the centre of Delhi due to the security. All the news channels and papers were speculating about the possibility of a terrorist attack.
I watched some of the parades on TV. For the most part it was a parade of their Armed Forces. Much like the old Soviet Union and China, they like to parade their ballistic nuclear missiles down the road.
Instead of going to the parade our driver took us to the Mall. When we got there it was pretty much empty, most people were probably still at home watching the parades. That soon changed in the afternoon. It was heaving!
We did some shopping and had some lunch. The malls in Manila and India are just as good as you get in any western country, but the prices are amazing. It just goes to show how cheap they can make the goods for and how much markup we have to pay in Australia.
When we left the mall a few hours later we expected we’d have to ring our driver to come and pick us up. We had him mobile number. But no, when we exited the mall we found that he was still sat there patiently waiting for us. He’d been there all the time. Poor sod. It was great having our own driver the whole time we were there so we made sure we gave him a good tip at the end of the stay.
The hospitality we received in India was faultless. Both the company and the hotel we stayed in even went as far as giving us gift-wrapped gifts when we left.
In the end, the India visit also seemed to be a bit of a waste of time as well. As I discovered, the only reason they are in scope is because they have the ability to access a table in a database which contains card numbers. They have no reason whatsoever to access that table. Once my client sorts out the table by rendering the card numbers unreadable (e.g. encryption or truncation) as they must do to be PCI compliant, and then remove access to the table, then the Indian company will not need to be audited.
The flight back from India was quite a trip. To save a bit of money my client had us returning via Dubai and then Singapore with Emirates, rather than going straight back via Singapore with Singapore Airlines, who we flew with on our outbound trip. All in all the travelling time was 24 hours (with a 4 hour stop in Dubai and 2 hours in Singapore). To make it worse it was a night flight from India to Dubai so we’d already been up all day. By the time I got home we’d been up for 48 hours and i’d spent most of the journey burning up and feeling like shit. I was worried that when we got to Brissie they might have the SARS scanners in place looking for people with fevers and I might get quarantined. In my own town!
It looks like I may be going back to Manila again quite soon. I don’t think I’ll need to go back to New Delhi. I loved Manila and Singapore but New Delhi was probably not the best introduction to India. The people are lovely but I’m not sure I’d want to holiday there. Saying that we didn’t really get too see that much of the city. We didn’t even see any of the final preparations for the Commonwealth Games.
That two weeks was the longest I’ve ever spent away from Rach and Lauren. I love traveling and I’m grateful for the opportunities that my job brings. But it is nice to get home again.
More trip photo’s on Flickr (I’ve made the pics Public so no need to log in).
Adventure Sailing
By · CommentsA couple of weeks ago I went on an Adventure Sailing Day courtesy of a gift experience that Rach bought me for my birthday.
The Yacht I went on, which is called Solo, has quite a spectacular history. It has won the Sydney to Hobart race four times and circumnavigated the world 3 times. Also, it was the first sailing boat to circumnavigate Australia since Matthew Flinders did it back in 1802.It was an early start when we slipped out into Moreton Bay on our way out to Moreton Island. It dawned on me that this was actually the first time I’d been out on a boat in Moreton Bay, besides catching the ferry over to Stradbroke Island. I never realised how many Island there are just a short sail away from Brisbane.
We sailed past St Helena Island and Green Island, spotting numerous Dolphins on the way and made our way over to Tangalooma on the protected west side of Moreton Island.
Once a Whaling Station, Tangalooma is now best known for it’s Wild Dolphin Resort where you can stay at the hotel and then hand-feed the bottlenose dolphins which swim right up to the beach in the shallow waters during Sunset.
Tangalooma is also known for its Wrecks Dive site, which was where we were heading. Fifteen vessels, many of which were used to dredge the Brisbane River, have been deliberately sunk on the landward side of Moreton Island by the Brisbane Council to form a breakwall for small boats and a wreck dive and snorkel site. The Tangalooma Wrecks provide diving in depths from 2-10m and attract an amazing amount of marine life. Much of the wrecks is now covered in coral and the amount of tropical fish was very similar to when I went diving on the Barrier Reef.
This time though I wasn’t diving, just snorkelling.
Unfortunately, as I jumped from the boat into the water I somehow managed to lose my snorkel. So for the first 20 minutes in the water I had to swim around in the water with only a face mask and no snorkel. I’m no free-diver so this became quite exhausting trying to hold my breath for long periods so I could get the snorkelling experience. Luckily some of the other passengers became tired quite quickly and went back to the boat so I managed to get one of their snorkels.
The experience was pretty amazing and I’ll definitely be going out there again.
After snorkelling the next stop was to go sand-boarding. By this time however the weather had turned and it started to rain. I new straight away that the sand-boarding would be out of the window as you can’t slide on wet sand. So we sailed around for a bit and waiting for the weather to brighten up again. It didn’t take long and within the hour the sun was shining and with the heat what it was we new it wouldn’t take long to dry out the sand.
I’ve never been sand-boarding before. The picture to the right shows the sand cliff that we were to sand-board down. It’s hard to get the right perspective in this photo, but trust me, it’s high, and steep. The thing about sand-boarding of course, unlike when you go snow-boarding, is there’s no ski-lifts to take you up to the top. To get to the top we simply had to climb, in the soft sand, in the searing heat.
I’m not exaggerating when I say that the climb to the top was probably the most strenuous exercise I’ve had in years, in-fact, I think running the rock race up the Rock of Gibraltar was easier than that.
Now I’ve never been snow-boarding either so standing on a sand-board, which looked just like a snow-board, was a completely new experience for me. None of the boat crew could be bothered to climb up there and from the forty or so passengers on the boat only a handful of us tried it out. So I had no-one to show me what to do. But how hard can it be right? You just stand on a board and try not to fall off!
It took a few attempts to get my balance at the top and stay upright, and then once I was stable I pushed off. The idea is that you put the weight on your back foot to control the descent – the harder you dig in the slower you will go. That’s the theory anyway. The truth is, as I quickly discovered, once the board picks up some speed it doesn’t matter how hard you dig in, there’s no stopping that momentum.
I’m quite proud to say I managed to make it about three quarters of the way down before I fell off.
I would have loved to have made it up for a second go but there was no way I was going to make that climb again. My calves were on fire!
After sand-boarding, the speedboat took us back to the Yacht where we had a beautiful lunch before having a leisurely sail around the islands.
To end the the day I sat back, cracked open a bottle of beer and did a spot of sunbathing while we slowly made out way back to shore.
A good day was had by all!
