Trivial pursuits, and the end of the (BBC) World

Stephen Kent-Taylor here. Anne's written about our admirable jogging-trip already, so I'll fill you in on the more important aspects of living in Oz.

We are trivia kings. Oh yes, that's right - Anne and I won our local pub quiz last night. 40 dollars (about 15 quid) in vouchers for the pub or adjoining "Bottle Shop" (off-license). We only won by 1 and a half points, so it's just as well I knew the names of the two heckling old men in The Muppet Show (Statler & Waldorf) and what the car in Knight Rider's initials stood for (Knight Industries Two Thousand).

So given that, we're now feeling very settled. No jobs yet, but what do you want - a miracle? The flat is nice, and is not as small as Anne makes out, and certainly not as small as some we saw. It has a kitchen section, a lounge section and a bedroom section, with no walls in between them, and a separate loo/shower room. This has lead to endlessly hilarious jokes such as "I'm in the bedroom and therefore can't hear you if you talk to me from the lounge. If you want to talk to me come to the bedroom." Ahahahhahahah. Sigh. I suppose you need to be there really.

I've always delighted in telling people how low-maintenance Anne is as a girlfriend. This was brought to my attention yesterday when she got quite excited when I allowed her to buy a variety pack of cereal all for herself. I think she associates these tiny cereal boxes with going on holiday, and I can now look forward to mornings of Anne joyfully deciding which cereal to have.

Speaking of getting over-excited about food: I tried Tim-Tams yesterday. These are Aussie chocolate biscuits, a bit like Penguins but different (more sugar, probably). I had been advised to try them, I think by Sarah in Tokyo. I am happy to report that they are glorious, and I shall be gorging myself on these delightful packets of joy at every opportunity.

Perhaps more exciting is the variety of Magnum ice-creams here in Oz. In the UK we get a fairly limited range of Walls Magnums (Magna), but here they have enjoyably different ones. They mistakenly call the company Walls "Streets" so they're Streets Magna here, but they have different flavours of this luxury snack here and it makes me very excited. Currently there's a limited edition range called "The Sixties Nine" (nice name). These are nine new flavours of Magna, whose names are puns on sixties icons and phrases. So far I have shoveled a "John Lemon" and a "Wood Choc" down my neck, and look forward to devouring the other seven. They say limited edition, so I'd best hurry! Go here to see them all on Streets' web site.

On a sadder note (can it get much sadder?) we don't have cable TV in our flat. There is a telly, but it only gets the Aussie networks. This means that, for the first time since we left the UK, we don't have BBC World. Yes - look concerned. No more hourly news reports from people with proper accents, no more world weather. I guess we'll survive, but I've yet to see how. I can report on a few bits of Aussie news: Harold Bishop and Lou seem to be trying to help Harold's girlfriend with her gambling addiction, and Donald "flat-head" Fisher is leaving the Bay for good, leaving Big Sally (whose sister is pregnant with Sally's twins) as acting Principal. So we're not totally out of touch.

I'm enjoying reading The Sydney Morning Herald here. It's a pretty good paper, with good crosswords (cryptic and quick) - thank goodness I brought my mini dictionary away with me. There are state elections here next month, so it will be interesting to see all the politicians bitching at each other in their very Aussie way.

Sydneysiders Us

So we now have a flat. Move in on Wednesday with any luck. Yay.

The flat is a studio flat off Oxford Street, quite near Hyde Park (yes, Sydney thinks it's London). We're also quite near The Botanical Gardens. Not bad! We lowered our budget quite a lot once we realised Anne may have a problem finding a job, but it'll certainly do us for three months, and we like the location. Oxford Street is quite back-packery, and Anne likes to think it's quite bohemian. Anne would like to be bohemian, but I'm a chartered accountant so I think that excludes me from ever joining her. The Mardi Gras (big gay parade) goes down Oxford Street on Sunday, so we'll have front row seats.

Another member of The Economist staff has arrived in Sydney - Hassan. He's over for two weeks and is staying with Andrew and Shae too. Anne is feeling left out since she's never worked at The Economist. We tease her, but try to sympathise as much as we feel we ought.

But the really important thing on everyone's minds? What films have I watched? Glad you asked. We've been quite slack since we got here really, prefering to run round Sydney in a sweat looking for jobs and somewhere to live rather than watch films. However, since we thought it was to wet to go to the short-film festival on Sunday we hired The Castle on video instead. This is an Aussie comedy from 1997 and I remember it received good reviews in the UK when it was released. It was a funny, strange man-versus-government film and deserves the four stars I'm giving it.

Then, on Monday night, Anne and I went to the Manly Twin Cinemas and saw The Quiet American. This is directed by an Aussie, Phillip Noyce (who also recently directed Rabbit Proof Fence), stars Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser and is set in Vietnam in the fifties. A very decent, interesting film which didn't out-stay its welcome. Four stars. (I'm being generous lately aren't I?)

So two films in just over a week. Not a terrible rate, but not up to my Tokyo score. Keep watching this space.

A busy week


Stephen here. Been here nearly a week now, and excuse my language but we're pooped. We've been all over Sydney (on foot!) looking for jobs and a flat and have been sleeping very, very well. This despite our justified fear of being horribly attacked by giant spiders in our bed!

The weather's been bad. Well, I should say that we think it's bad since there's been a lot (and I mean A LOT!) of rain. The Aussies, on the other hand, are rejoicing. Rejoicing I tell you. The Prime Minister, John Howard even applauded the rain. This isn't due just to a general malaise in this strange country, I ought to point out. It's due to the fact that this rain is releiving a particularly long drought, and should do the farms a world of good. At the risk of sounding selfish - has no one considered the poor Brits who come over here for a bit of sun?

We wanted to go to an outdoor short-film festival tonight (called Tropfest). However, the rain may have put the kybosh on that. We'll see.

Things my girlfriend and I have argued about in McDonalds

Well Anne's beaten me to the McRow story (see below), so let me give you my side. First, it goes without saying that I was in the right. I won't bore you with details but if we can take that as a given and move on that'd be good. Right.

I waited outside McDonalds for Anne to return. I figured she'd calm down and realise I was great, but it didn't seem to happen. After two hours I gave up and decided to go to the ferry port. I then realised I'd been waiting next to a lap-dancing club and was tempted to go in there for a few hours just to annoy Anne. I resisted (probably because I was too scared to go in) and then thought about going to see "The Gangs of New York" at the cinema. "That's three hours long", I thought, "She'll be really worried about me!" Resisted that too.

I tried to phone Anne, and needed change. I went to a sweet shop to break a note. I was tempted to get crispy M&Ms because I know Anne hates those, but then I thought that a better way to get back at her was to get chocolate M&Ms, which she likes, and then eat them all myself. Ahahahahaha - I win!

Really, the depths of my pettyness have yet to be determined.

I returned home to find my ladies, Anne and Shae, necking wine and discussing men. This was unfortunate, since Shae idolises me and will probably now (mistakenly) think I have a flaw or two. It's Shae I feel sorry for in all this.

Time lord

Not an entry, more an administrative point. I've changed the time on the diary so it's now on Aussie time (11 hours ahead of the UK). I experience the day before you lot in the UK. I could ring you up and tell you what's going to happen today, then you could put bets on in the UK and we could (jointly) make a fortune. Why has no one thought of this before??

A quickie from Sydney!!

Yay - we're here. It's warm and grey at the moment, and I'm in a suit. The first time in a while I've worn one.

Before I start, I should say that I watched the rest of The Beach on Sunday, and liked it. Four stars.

Then we saw Sweet Home Alabama on the plane. Pap, but suitable for plane journeys - two stars. She should have stayed with the guy from NYC IMO. Ho hum.

So, arrived in Sydney airport, and were met by Shae, a friend from The Economist. She and her fiance, Andrew (also ex-Economist) have been working out here and running a drop-in centre for Economist staff on their travels. I suspect that the group may soon be running a Sydney branch from Andrew and Shae's spare room.

So the generousity of friends has once again shined upon us, and they have let us use their spare room if we don't annoy them too much. We're looking for a flat (or a room) in Sydney, and for jobs. I went for an interview at Michael Page (recruitment consultant) this morning (hence the suit).

Bass: How low can you go?

Hello. Stephen here. I have to say that now, since we've found how to let Anne post to this diary (see below - remember the latest posts appear at the top), so it's now no longer a monologue.

So yes, I have bought a digital camera. Only a cheap one (but that's all relative) but it's 2 megapixels, has a view screen and a flash, so good enough for my purposes. It took some time to convince Anne of the obvious benefits, but she saw sense in the end, and is now even, I think, pleased I have it. I can see her smiling face as I write this.

I have to fill in a couple of gaps in Anne's entry (bless her). When we returned from our six hour stroll (phew) to the fish market (gruesome) et al on Thursday we watched Erin Brokervich (sp?) on DVD. I quite enjoyed this. It was well done and pleasant so I'm awarding it four stars on the SKT scale. Julia Roberts made you forget she can be quite annoying and Albert Finney hammed it up nicely as a Yank. Friday evening, after a very long day in Hakone, we watched Scarface (the Brian DePalma version) on DVD. Almost three hours, and pretty good, but suffering IMO from third act problems. Pacino's character's meteoric rise as crime lord is matched by an inevitable plummet in the last hour, but is it all too much? (Yes, it is.) 3 stars.

It's Sunday now. Last night was a bit of a bloody nightmare. Let me tell you why...

We went to Roppongi for a meal. This is a very "Western-friendly" area, meaning that there are lots of annoying western tourists there. More westerners than I've seen in total the whole rest of the time we've been here. It makes you appreciate the Japanese. Anyway, we had an Italian meal in a nice little place, and arrived home, after a walk, at about 10.30pm. Not for us the late-night partying.

However, next door were having a party. Loud loud music. S'OK, it's still early. When it was still going at 11.30, when we were about to go to bed I had a great idea. Let's watch an hour of a film on DVD, and then by the time we've done that it'll be nearly 1a.m. and they'll have quietened down by then. OK - it's all good. We watched an hour and a bit of The Beach. (No star award yet, since we've not finished watching it.) But by 1am the music was still pumping. Very loud. We looked out of the front door and saw hundreds of pairs of shoes outside the neighbours' door, which was quite a funny sight. We then went to bed. Once in bed I decided I wanted a photo of the shoes, so nipped downstairs in my pants to use my new, flashy camera (see photo by right-clicking on the "Big Adventure photos" link in this frame and select "Open in new window"). I didn't realise someone was out there. They spoke to me (in foreign) and I got embarrassed due to being caught out in my pants. It's OK, they'll probably think I'm Wayne (who lives here)!

Anyway, the music kept going. I say music, but really it was just beat after beat after beat. I didn't keep track of the number of beats per minute so I can't report whether this noise was house, garage, speed garage or convenience store, but it was loud and bloody annoying. (Sorry for the swear-word, but I think it helps to demonstrate my anger.) It felt like I was in a cartoon and the whole room (and my head) was throbbing to each beat. I have to assume these youths were smoking an E or mashed off their pylons on some other modern drug - how else would they derive any pleasure from such a racket. Gaaaaah! I was going mad and it was still going at 3am. I came away to relax and was at the end of my tether after just a week (and a bit). I tried to calm myself down by imagining the noise was actually some angry Yakuza neighbours banging the party's hosts' heads against the wall very quickly, but it didn't seem to help much. 3am - haven't these people heard of chill-out music?

I asked the to turn it down, politely, a few times by leaning out of the window and pleading politely. Eventually at 3.30am they did. It was bliss, but it still took me some time to get to sleep as I was so furious. I think they were English, or American or something. Having seen the Japanese for a week or so I find it hard to believe they'd have so little respect for others. The guests I spoke to were all Brits or Yanks anyhow.

Anyway, calm now. Have had some sleep and must relax. Must relax. I suppose people are rude the world over. Especially the Brits. Off to Sydney tonight so very excited.

Wednesday. Still in Tokyo. Day 5 of our Big Adventure.

On Monday night we went for a meal with Sarah, Wayne and four of their friends, and ended up hiring a room for Karaoke,and getting home at 3am. As anyone from The Economist who was at my leaving do will know, me and Karaoke is not a pleasant mixture, and this was a fairly small room where the eight of us sat round a table and "sang" our little hearts out. A weird experience I can tell you. Anne and I performed a stunning rendition of "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" by The Beatles that will be forever etched on the brains of those who were there. Good fun though, weirdly.

Tuesday, and Anne and I went a-wanderin' in Tokyo town. We walked to a large park with good gardens. We paid 200 yen each for entrance and got one and a half hours entertainment out of it. Not bad. (200 yen is just over a pound.) We were very very hung over (the previous night's Karaoke necessitated wine, beer and sake). I was in a bit of a state, what with that and jet-lag. I did, however, discover the answer to a question that had been bothering me for some years: Why is Gary Linnekar (sp?) so obsessed with Walkers crisps? I mean, he doesn't just like them - he's mental about them. I've seen film evidence of him trying to con small kiddies out of packs of Walkers. The lengths that man will go to! Anyway, in that hung-over way I wondered if perhaps food would help. I couldn't face noodles or anything too adventurous, so we went into a convenience store in search of some crisps. Yes, I could have bought Pringles there, but opted for a Japanese variety. The pack looked fairly plain, so I was hoping for ready salted (my favourite). But no, they tasted like pineapple flavour. They were certainly sweet. I ate no more than three crisps. Yuck!

So I got to thinking, Gary Linnekar played for a Japanese football team for a while didn't he? Anne assures me he did. I reckon it's possible that he wasn't crisp-obsessed when he left the UK, but I hypothesise that by the time he returned he was foaming at the mouth in anticipation of some decent salty potato snack. I'm glad I figure these things out in the end.

My mood in the park was pretty dour. With the crisp disaster AND my hang-over I was all ready to give up on the Big Adventure after just 4 days and return to the safety of the UK. (I didn't know at this time that this "saftey" included tanks and army men at Heathrow!) I soon perked up though when I saw some big koi carp and about nine or ten cats. Easily pleased - me?

So after 200 yen well spent, we carried on into town, and daringly went to a cafe for noodles. There was no English writing anywhere, so we figured we'd get by on pointing, but the nice lady bought a menu with some English on for us. We were still worried that we may do the wrong thing and offend the Japanese in the worst way since Des Clarke got on the wrong side of Mr Oodigawa. It all went fine, fortunately, and we slurped our noodles merrily, along with the natives. (We didn't slurp the natives - I meant that they too slurped their noodles.)

We kept walking after lunch, and I reckon that by the end of the day we must have walked thirty miles. I'd forgotten to take my pedometer out so I could be wrong, but it felt like a lot.

Sarah and Wayne had also been suffering from the night before, so we settled for pizza and a film in the evening. Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky. I'd seen the original Spanish film on which it was based. I'm obliged by pretension to say I preferred the original, but the US remake was pretty goood too, and Cameron Diaz makes a good mad woman. Four stars. Anne later pointed out that going travelling isn't just about watching films. I treated that outburst with the contempt it deserved.

Today (Wednesday) Sarah and Wayne left for Beijing. In China. That means we're alone until they return on Sunday (when we fly to Sydney). We do, however, have the use of their very nice flat, so you probably shouldn't feel too sorry for us. We went to a place called Nikko (about two hours away by train) to see lots of temples. I was set in a forest with beautiful mountinous surroundings. Really quite nice. I think that after a while you can see enough temples, but we're not yet templed-out. I did quite resent having to take my shoes off each time we went in one though - it was freezing up there and I think I may have frostbite. Not counting travel, it cost 1000 yen each to see the temples. That's about a fiver. We spent about an hour and a half at the temples, which isn't as good value as the park (and there were no animals), but it was still OK. We'd had an adventurous lunch before we went in, where we sat cross-legged on the floor. We're practically Japanese ourselves now.

I think I'm slowly getting over my jet-lag, using a course of alcohol and sleeping tablets. You can imagine my annoyance when I tell you that Anne doesn't seem to suffer at all with this malady. When I'm awake at 4am, she's sleeping like a baby. When I'm falling asleep in the afternoon whilst crossing a busy road, Anne's bounding ahead with a spring in her step. Still, I try not to let it get to me. I am something of a martyr.

Tokyo
The first entry! A long (12 hours) flight to Tokyo on BA. The flight was mostly empty, so we were able to spread out a bit. However I rarely sleep on planes and, true to form, managed only a small doze. I watched The Bourne Identity (good fun - three stars) and Solaris (new George Clooney film, disappointing - two stars) on the plane, so that helped pass some of the time. We arrived in Tokyo at 9am local time on Saturday, which was midnight UK time. We were met at the bus station by Sarah, a friend from school. Sarah and her boyfriend, Wayne, have been living here for two years and had offered to put us up (and put up with us) for the time we're in Tokyo. Not only is this very kind and saves on accommodation, it also means we have locals as guides, so we should get a lot out of our eight days here!

First stop was the electronics shops. Sarah says they usually take vistors to see temples first, but thought I'd appreciate these shops. That says a lot aboput me and people's perceptions of me. The shops were great! I'm very tempted by a digital camera. Anne is less keen. We shall see who wins this battle of wills (my yen are on Anne).

Saturday night, after a two hour power nap, we went for a fab Japanese meal. On our own we'd have been a bit confused and probably gone for something safe (pizza?) However, with our guides we were able to enjoy a great meal without feeling we might be committing some terrible faux-pas. Then it was on to a party, where there were English, Aussies, Americans, and even a Brazillian. All very cosmopolitan! It was a good do, and despite having slept little since Friday morning Anne and I managed somehow to stay awake and got to bed at one in the morning. I was quite proud of us.

We had a reservation at a very posh restaurant (!) on Sunday afternoon. On the way there we went to an area where the young Japanese show their rebellious side, by dressing up bizarrely and just hanging out. There were people dressed as gothic doctors and nurses (complete with blood), and some loud bands. The police were very timid, and when they wanted a band to stop and pack up they kept their hands behind their back and let the band finish the next song. All very strange, and there didn't seem to be much real rebellion going on. We started a game here that we have not stopped playing yet, and that game is the game of looking out for dogs dressed ridiculously. The Japanese dress their (mostly small) dogs in jumpers (some with hoods), hats, football tops and even skirts. Not all at the same time, of course - that would be silly.

Nearby there was a nice big temple, where some traditional weddings were going on. Then it was on to the meal, where we over-ate. We collapsed that evening, after a tour of the "pink" district (the red-light area), in front of The Sum Of All Fears on DVD. I'd seen it before and enjoyed it again. Four stars. (My film-judgement-star-system is out of five stars by the way.)

Monday. I'd woken at 4am, and only got to sleep again at 8am. Bloody jet lag! Sarah and Wayne are at work today, so Anne and I had to be very brave and go it alone. Yes, look impressed.

We took a tube line to the end (under Sarah's instructions) and went to Asakusa. Here there were some nice temples, though the surrounding area was pretty unattractive. The weather was really nice and clear. Cold, but bright. We then caught a leisurely water-bus to Odaiba, an expensive land-reclamation site where shops, amusement arcades and rides have been built. Two contrasting areas today then. I was in danger of falling asleep whenever I sat down (especially on the boat). Jet-lag will not beat me - I will prevail.