The purpose of these questions is to ascertain that the tourist has fulfilled their legal requirement to purchase one of the following items:

1. a boomerang (emblazoned with a sketch of australia in the aboriginal style)
2. a didgeridoo (emblazoned with various colourful patterns in the aboriginal style)
3. a crocodile dundee style hat (complete with fake crocodile strap embellished with fake crocodile teeth at regular intervals)
4. a piece of “genuine” aboriginal dot-art featuring childlike portrayals of koala bears and kangaroos.

note: item 2 is essential for dreadlocked gapyear twats, regardless of whether they’re carrying items 1 or 3.

If you do not have one of these items in your luggage you’ll not be permitted to leave the country and will be directed to a store at the airport to complete your purchase, a bit like this one:

As I left Australia it was fortunately evident that everyone leaving had fulfilled their duty to purchase one of the items above (and in a number of cases they were actually wearing item 3 to demonstrate their compliance to law), unfortunately I was lacking. As I approached customs I had nothing to show and prepared myself for the worst. Fortunately during the search of my luggage they found the item below and after a heated discussion I was let off with a severe warning:

I took my scrotum into the office today, took it out of the packaging and left it on the desk. Sure enough within about ten minutes one of my colleagues had walked over, picked it up, sniffed the inside of it and started stuffing his fingers inside to find out what it was for, “what is it???  is it for coins????”.

I waited until he was knuckle deep before telling him where it came from…

Secondly, I saw a ladies bum!!!! yesterday, at Watsons Bay!

We went there to take a look around instead of the blue mountains, the weather forecast had been pretty bad and we figured there were other things to do if we stayed close to the city. Sure enough we’d not even arrived at Watsons Bay before it started spitting. Anyway, we soldiered on and took a look at the suicide cliffs at The Gap then wondered down into the harbour for a fish and chip lunch (the ozzies do a pretty reasonable fish and chips and I’m getting in as many portions as possible before coming back to Shanghai).

While we were eating lunch we were treated to a splendid display of buttock as a young lady bent down and revealed so much arse that you could virtually see her breakfast. Of course, being a blogger, I did the decent thing and snapped a photo for posterity!

There’s not a lot more I can say about this, well nothing that Sir Mixalot hasn’t said already:

So your girlfriend rolls a Honda, playin’ workout tapes by Fonda
But Fonda ain’t got a motor in the back of her Honda
My anaconda don’t want none
Unless you’ve got buns, hun
You can do side bends or sit-ups,
But please don’t lose that butt
Some brothers wanna play that “hard” role
And tell you that the butt ain’t gold
So they toss it and leave it
And I pull up quick to retrieve it
So Cosmo says you’re fat
Well I ain’t down with that!
‘Cause your waist is small and your curves are kickin’
And I’m thinkin’ bout stickin’
To the beanpole dames in the magazines:
You ain’t it, Miss Thing!
Give me a sister, I can’t resist her
Red beans and rice didn’t miss her
Some knucklehead tried to dis
‘Cause his girls are on my list
He had game but he chose to hit ‘em
And I pull up quick to get wit ‘em
So ladies, if the butt is round,
And you want a triple X throw down,
Dial 1-900-MIXALOT
And kick them nasty thoughts
Baby got back!

My personal opinion is that tall buildings are pretty much in the same bracket as sports cars and indicate that people are pretty much compensating for something, if you know what I mean…

It’s worth noting that there are whole continents which don’t need tall buildings and back in Stoke we actually knocked down our skyscraper (unity house, 18 storeys high) to make way for a mosque, so there!

Ahhhhh, and just as I write this I find out that Huaxi, a rich village in Jiangsu province has decided it needed a skyscraper so it’s built the world’s 15th tallest building…. Bear in mind that this is just a village, not even a town, not even a city… what are they thinking? What’s more this isn’t enough, they’re going to build an EVEN taller tower at 538m……

Some pictures of tall buildings in Melbourne:

And the kind of propoganda they put around, the evidence is there for us all to see guys, it’s too late to start printing these t-shirts …

First stop was Sydney and we let our customer organise the hotel for us (on their insistence), things dragged on a bit with no hotel confirmation and it was only a couple of days before we were due to arrive that we finally got confirmation of our booking. “Sorry guys” the email began, “everything downtown is booked up for Chinese New Year, Mardi Gras and the AC/DC concert so you’re a bit out of town”. He wasn’t wrong.. We were in a small suburb called Hornsby, a one bar town, the sort of bar that is almost empty on a saturday night and where everyone does a double-take at seeing a new face in the bar. On the second night we decided to go into the city centre and took the train, it took 90 minutes each way including the walk either end, after that we gave up and decided to wait for Melbourne (I’m back visiting family in Sydney later this week and decided I could wait).

So, we moved to Melbourne on Wednesday morning and had a day full of customer visits, I was quite excited about getting out in the city for a few beers and taking a look around. When I plugged in the address my colleague gave me to the GPS I was surprised to see it pointing at the airport, surely this was a mistake??? “Errr no” he replied, “I stayed here last time I was here and had an early morning flight so I just booked it again”, super, super job! I urged him to have a nap while I drove there, secretly fuming, swerving excessively round corners and roundabouts and taking great pleasure on seeing his sleeping  head jolt from side to side. (p.s. this was the hotel with the spider”. Actually it wasn’t even a hotel, it was a motel with butlins style chalets filled with plastic chairs, formica and outdated fittings (including a ludicrous combo telephone/radio/alarm clock which was surely a mid-80’s Amstrad cast-off).

Anyway, next stop was Perth, we did much better here and had a cheap hotel pretty much in the centre of the city, no complaints this time. We stopped one night and had a few beers in town, checking out the next morning. Our day of customer visits came to an end at 3pm giving us 9 hours before our flights around midnight. My colleague suggested finding some kind of cafe with wifi access so we could write reports on the trip and send important emails. I had a better idea and grabbed the GPS, scrolled across to the sea, picked a random point on the coast north of the airport (figuring it would be easy to get back going the opposite way to rush hour traffic) and set off. We ended up at a place called Sorrento and drove along the coast past the millionaire’s apartments with rows of yachts until we found a place to park (I’m guessing North Beach). I stripped off in the car park, changed to my swimmers and ran across the beach to take a dip (it was 40C at this point), a great plan which quickly came to a skidding halt as I realised the water was freezing cold and deepened from ankle deep to waist deep within a couple of footsteps, the final nail in the coffin were the submerged rocks scraping my legs and feet. I stumbled back out and made do with wetting my ankles. After about 45 minutes I was pretty much sizzling and decided an escape was needed before I burnt to a crisp, we retired to a beachside cafe until it was time to return the car at 7pm.

Anyway, I’m now in Melbourne after taking an overnight flight from Perth to Melbourne on Friday night. I barely slept on the flight and arrived in Melbourne at 6:30am, taking a bus to the city centre and then another bus to the hotel only to be told I couldn’t check in until 1pm. I asked if there was any way I could check in early to be told “there is no way sorry”, quite frustrating considering that about 5 people had checked out while I rearranged my bags to take one with me and leave the other behind. Anyway, I went out for a walk, sat in the park for a while, saw a dead possum, saw a live possum, walked past an IMax theatre (no shows till the afternoon), walked through the traditional australian area close to the hotel and slowly made my way back at around 10:30 feeling like death to try and find somewhere to sit down and sleep. The guy saw me wandering in and had a change of heart, letting me into a room, I could have hugged him!

Traditional Australian archway (I’m guessing aboriginal?) close to my hotel

That was pretty much it for that day, I didn’t leave the bed until Corky texted me about dinner (ex-shanghai, if any of you remember Swiss James’ blog (it was called I Shanghai or something you might have seen him on there). He treated me to some standard Australian fair at a place Sichuan house, where we enjoyed Hui Guo Rou and spicy eggplant before heading out on the town for a few (a lot) beers. Sunday was another write off and as I was getting out of bed at 5pm for my late lunch (a paracetamol and some traditional australian lasagne and chips) I realised that I’d spent something like 26 out of my 36 hours in Melbourne in bed (long time readers might be getting a sense of deja-vu) with nothing but the view from my hotel window to show for it:

Just after I’d finished my lasagne I got a text from Matt saying he was going out for dinner with a couple of mates, would I like to join? Naturally I said yes , especially as we would be eating traditional australian food.

Traditional Australian “Sichuan Hotpot”, as seen on Crocodile Dundee, served in a “billabong”

Anyway, here are some of the pics I took last time.

Still got teething problems with this plugin, I’d select “view with piclens” and then click the bottom right icon to expand to fullscreen, seems to work the best, there’s a slideshow thing and you can flick between images.

Let me know if it gives you any problems, I’m working on a slow wi-fi and can’t test it properly.

p.s. before anyone asks, NO these weren’t taken on a Canon

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

123►

Pictures are invariably crap because they were shot through the window of a zig-zagging taxi while driving between customers!

Hmm, I might have to upload some proper pics from last time so you can all see how amazing I am…

hand painted signs (just in case you were wondering!)

you decide

some kind of protest in Chennai

5 by my reckoning

If I lived in India I’d be driving one of these!

Things are getting slightly desperate, it’s already been out for a look around a couple of times (the poo, not the spider).

Update – can’t find much on the net. I think it might be a Huntsman spider (local pain and swelling), side effects of being bitten don’t sound as bad as not going to the toilet, I’M GOING IN!!!

Update 2 – it’s moved under the sink

Update 3 – I’VE BEEN, IT’S ALL OK, IT’S ALL OVER, MOVE ALONG PLEASE

Update 4 – actually I think it might be a wolf spider, not a huntsman spider

He was a regional manager and was pretty much one of our shortest employments in the history of the company. Within a couple of weeks people were having bets on whether he’d make it to the autumn holiday or whether he’d make it to Christmas, after a regional meeting where his numbers didn’t add up and his entire pitch was based on management buzzwords and hot air the betting reached fever pitch, in the end he managed to drag it out for six months before getting the old heave-ho.

Anyway, we met with a customer yesterday and he told us that he had a meeting with this guy before he left. Apparently he had grand plans and kept talking about the importance of platitude, he asked us what he’d meant, we said we had no idea but reassured him of the real position.

Now, platitude isn’t in my vocabulary so I had to look it up, here’s the dictionary definition:

Platitude (noun) – a flat, dull, or trite remark, esp. one uttered as if it were fresh or profound.

The irony……

So, what did I get for $400 a night? Well, nothing more than I’d get for around 1/3 of the price in Shanghai. I’m not sure why hotels in India are so expensive but it seems to be the case in all of the major cities there, it’s a major problem when you’re trying to cut costs and is the main reason I don’t visit India on business more often.

Anyway, I had the full range of hotels while I was India this time, here are the two extremes:

1 – Gordon House Suites Mumbai

My Indian colleague recommended booking into the Intercontinental (airport hotel) but at almost $300 a night I decided to look for somewhere cheaper. I ended up finding a place on Hotel.com and tripadvisor which was billed as a boutique hotel, had free airport transfers both ways, free breakfast, was situated right next to the Intercontinental and was less than half of the price, I thought I’d give it a go.

First impressions were good, although coming from a snow covered Shanghai I was rather looking forward to the warmth of India. I picked up my keys from reception and made my way upstairs to the 6th floor. Each floor in the hotel had a different theme, I noted a jungle floor and various other tropical offerings all sounding just the job for my chilled bones. Unfortunately my floor was dubbed ‘the glacier floor” and all the rooms were decorated as if you were staying in some kind of ice hotel, think glass floor tiles, a glass desk, pictures of snow covered mountains, acres of white paint, a faint blue night light (blue ice colour), definitely NOT what I’d been looking forward to..

Anyway, here are some pics, it was very nice actually and much better value than one of the main international hotels:

One of the first things I noticed in the room was an enormous bath, almost wide enough for two and deep as well, I could barely wait to get in after a winter of quick showers in a freezing cold bathroom in Shanghai. I dumped my bags in the lounge area and started running the water.

The second thing you notice in the room is a large leaflet about how dreadful it is to waste water. I had a quick flick through while I was waiting for the bath to fill. It was a good ploy by the hotel, within a couple minutes I was feeling so guilty about filling that huge bath just for myself that I turned the water off and bathed in a few inches of water! In retrospect maybe I should have called down to reception to see if there was anybody (female of course) who fancied sharing with me, but too late now (H, if you read this I’m only thinking of the water!!!! Honest!!!).

The hotel bordered with a really interesting looking slum area which I was warned to stay away from, I doubt I’d have had any trouble though!

2 – Ahmedabad Club Room

At the other end of the scale is the room I stayed at in Ahmedabad. I was visiting a customer I’d helped a lot in the past and he wanted to repay me by putting me up at his club. It was a very nice offer but I really didn’t want to stay there, we tried a number of excuses for stopping at a real hotel but he insisted (I don’t want to sound like a snob but when I’m on a business trip I want to be in somewhere fairly decent and comfortable with a decent internet connection where I can rest well etc).

The place had exclusive membership but was a little reminiscent of a 1960’s school gymnasium, they had a swimming pool, badminton court and gymnasium with some odd stuff like a skating rink. It was very much old school, think guys with big moustaches all calling you sir and barefooted cooleys running round with people’s luggage and food orders. They had an interesting way of making sure members pay their subscription charges though, an A4 poster on a signboard in the entrance of the hotel announed in big letters that “All staff please note that Mr xxxxx was currently suspended from the club due to a bounced cheque” a sign obviously intended for other customers, not the staff, I doubt he’ll dare show his face there again.

Anyway, onto the rooms, they were adequate and gloomy but basic and hadn’t been decorated for a long time. I was amazed to find that they had wi-fi though, it wasn’t the best connection but it was a welcome addition!

The lowest point though was that the room had no flushing toilet… Every time I went (and that was quite frequently after all that Indian food..) I had to fill up the bucket and use that to flush manually…

The best part – it was only for one night!