Monk

I love coincidence stories, especially ones to do with travel. I love hearing about how people bump into each other by chance, like when Rod Zlonzak and Glenny Rogers crossed paths in Rome, or when I was chatting to some clown in 'Cheers' at Malaysia airport and he used to babysit my boss at work. That kind of thing.

I also love 'brush with fame' stories. Ever since meeting Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan at the New York Deli in High St Armadale at the age of 7, I've been fascinated with these stories.

I have a story that mixes coincidence with fame, so I can't believe it has taken me so long to write about my meetings with Tony 'Monk' Shaloub. That's right... meetings. With an 's'. Plural. The big guy just won't leave me alone. The first one was at Mammoth Mountain, California, where I held the prestigious title of 'Ski Rental Guy'. Monk came in and got some skis. He didn't talk to me as such (or even look in my direction) but I knew right then and there that we had connected in a deep and profound way.

Cut to 2 years later and I'm on holidays in Barcelona with Azza, Leah and the garden Nome. We've just met up at the Hard Rock Cafe and were about to head down La Rambla when I was stopped in my tracks by Tony 'Monk' Shaloub, who was pretending to look at a map but really looking at me with his peripheral vision. After I stared for a while, he dropped the charade and stared straight at me with an ambiguous half smile. I took it as, "Hey, you're that guy from the ski shop in Mammoth Mountain. We keep bumping into each other. Weird. You're pretty awesome, you know that?", but it could also have been more of a "Take a picture, big nose, it'll last longer. Stalker."

This page is boring if nobody adds anything, so tell me about your brush with fame and/or coincidence story.

U bastards!

Ok, so this was not a good couple of weeks to be out of Melbourne. I'll admit that much. Sure, if I wanted to I'm sure I could've found some second rate band cover band somewhere in Honkers, but it's hardly the same as U2, Pearl Jam and a Make Poverty History concert in the same week, all within walking distance of my old apartment! It's ok, I've heard those bands are crap at live shows anyway.

.....

I think I'm going to cry.

So to all you bastards who just went to the U2 concert - congratulations. Well done. I am officially jealous and may take some time to get over it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to put the iPod on and dream of what might have been.

Golf in Honkers

After another trip to Shenzhen to purchase some golf clubs (and an ill-fitting jacket. Dammit!) I decided to have a look for an affordable golf course in Hong Kong. Unfortunately, the words 'affordable' and 'golf' rarely make it into the same sentence over here, and it looks like I'm going to have to settle for the good old driving range, of which there are many.

There's a golf course just up the road from me, but it costs a lazy $1500 ($250AUD) for one round. Out of curiosity I asked how much a membership costs. Well, they haven't been for sale since 1997, but if I were to purchase one privately it would set me back 1.5 - 2 million Honky dollars. That's about $300,000 Australian! You'd really have to love golf, wouldn't you?

To make matters worse, last night I took a walk 40 minutes up the hill to the driving range only to be told that non members are only allowed to 'drive' on weekdays, and besides I didn't satisfy the dress code requirements. They honestly looked at me like I was a walking, talking piece of crap who had sludged its way through the door and was bringing the club more and more into disrepute with every breath I took.

Well, excuse me for breathing, Mr. Fancy Golf Course Man. If I had any moral issues with sneaking onto the back of the course and playing a few cheeky holes before, they're completely gone now. I might pop on down there and play the back nine tomorrow morning and save myself 750 big ones! And I won't even wear a collar. Take that!

Inconvenience

After finally seeing the convincing, moving and frightening picture, 'An Inconvenient Truth', I felt compelled to take the time to recommend it to everybody. I know the message is getting out there, with even Rupert Murdoch yesterday announcing his backflip on Global Warming, saying, "it is now our responsibility to take the lead on the issue," and that, "the planet deserves the benefit of the doubt".

Australia is the largest per capita contributor to greenhouse gases and Johnny Howard mocks Al Gore's film and the Stern Report as overreactions, but it seems that it is gradually being accepted by everyone else on the planet.

Johnny H: "Mr. Speaker, so-called global warming is just a load of poppycock made up by a bunch of long haired hippies and foreigners who smoke marijuana and bludge off your hard earned tax dollars. Don't overreact. In fact, don't act at all. As the world's largest per capita contributor to the problem, we don't feel the need to sign any agreements that are binding, because in the spirit of mateship, a handshake should be good enough."

Anyway, I won't go on too long. I don't pretend to know how to fix it, but surely awareness is the first step. All I want to do is recommend that you watch the film, read up on global warming or just take a few minutes to visit the website: www.climatecrisis.org

Asleep in One Hot Minute

Crap! I just wrote a whole post and accidentally deleted it. Flashbacks to uni assignments. Remember to save regularly, Nicky boy. You never listened to Ms McKay in high school, did you?

Now, I just want to quit and not write anything, but I'd better put something down now that I've gone to the trouble of googling an image of the Chili Peppers album. What's it there for, you ask? Well, it seemed more interesting before I had to retype it, but hey, if Gregory David Roberts can write a 900 page book from scratch three times, I guess I can whack down a couple of paragraphs.

Where was I? Oh yeah, I was suffering from a mild bout of insomnia recently and was wondering what might speed up the snoozy process. Beer? No, causes bad sleep and unwelcome middle of the night toilet trip. Less coffee during the day? No, I like coffee too much. Thinking, thinking... aha! The Chili Peppers!

I remembered how in Year 12 I used to come home from school, jump into bed, pull the CD player up next to my head and play the Red Hot Chili Peppers album, 'One Hot Minute' at full volume. I don't know why I did this (and continued to do it again and again) but it sent me straight to sleep every time. There was something very comfortable about it, and ever since, whenever I hear that album at a high volume, it sends me to the land of nods. With this in mind, I borrowed Naomi's iPod and pressed play.

Bliss. I was asleep before the end of 'Aeroplane'. I don't know what it is about that album that makes me snooze. Maybe the music puts my brain into a different, more relaxed state of consciousness, or maybe it brings back memories of my after school naps and nods off in remembrance. I don't know, but it's a handy little trick to know when the old brain won't switch off.

Careful Drivers

Last night, Nomes and I went with a couple of friends to see The Prestige. It was pretty good, but the thing that has motivated me to post is not the movie, but the taxi ride home.

My friends will tell you that since getting together with 'Swerves' Borkoswki, I haven't been the best passenger in the world. Her inability to differentiate left from right, combined with a general indifference to things such as traffic lights and roundabouts have ensured that I'm always on edge in the passenger seat. However, last night was something else altogether.

During a ten minute taxi ride, we managed to do about 120 in a 70 zone, cut off literally dozens of cars, inciting road rage inspired threatening revs and swerves from other taxi drivers, and cause 3 almost accidents. I was half way through a sentence at one point when the taxi attempted to run down a guy on a scooter.

"Hey Nomes, do you ever get the feeling you're about to be in a car cr..... Shit! Watch where you're going!"

It felt like that scene in The Naked Gun where the girl from the Driving School starts to chase the criminals, and we hastily reached for the hitherto ignored seatbelts and found religion.

After endangering a dozen or so lives and breaking possibly hundreds of road rules, we finally arrived at the ferry pier - shaken, pale and ready to make the next leg of the journey. Naomi felt ok, though. A certain lightness came over her, as the crown of 'Worst Driver In The World' was lifted from her head and passed on to a worthy recipient.

London and Spain

Time for an addition to my little belated travelogue.

After a great time in Sweden, Nomes and I headed to Spain via London. We were only in London for one night, but we managed to spend about $500 Aussie on crappy accommodation, tube tickets and a brilliant show on the West End. It was a first to a professional production for both of us and I couldn't have enjoyed it more. We saw 'The Producers' and it brought the house down. If I was a theatre critic, my review would be one of the ones quoted on the poster: "I laughed so hard I almost cried!", "A fast paced thrill ride from start to finish!", "The theatre was really cold!".

After the briefest of brief stays in London, we boarded a RyanAir flight to Barcelona. Or, I should say, Girona, about an hour out of Barcelona. I'm sure BrianAir and Sleazyjet are good if you have someone to drop you off and pick you up, but next time I think I'll just pay ten pounds extra and with a 'proper' airline. By the time you add up the cost of the ticket, plus extra transportation, I think we spent more time and money on a budget airline than if we'd flown British Airways. And then there was the terrorism crisis, which we were caught in the middle of. I won't go into that, but the highlight was that Ali saw me lining up at Heathrow Airport on Hong Kong TV. Nice! I'm famous!

It was then on to Spain, where we had the brilliant idea of hiring a car instead of catching trains. Unfortunately, we failed to take into account that when you have a car, you need to find a place to park it everywhere you go. You also need to pay for that parking on top of your hostel costs. We drove from Barcelona to San Sebastian, arrived late at night and couldn't find a place to stay, so we drove to the outskirts and spent an uncomfortable night in the car. Just when we thought we'd made a credit card busting, debt inducing, stupid mistake, we stumbled across a free parking area that hardly anyone new about right next to the beach and just a few minutes from the old town. Perfect positioning. We also bought a couple of little matresses/seat covers for the car, parked on an incline and we had beds for the rest of the trip. Two birds, one stone. Sure, sleeping in the car might not sound like the best way to spend a vacation, but it had three unexpected benefits:

1. No early checkouts
2. No accommodation costs
3. Roxette's hit, 'Sleeping In My Car' was in my head for the whole holiday. Great!

So, San Sebastian was great. I saw a lot of showered in public toilets, drank the best coffee ever and saw lots of nudie rudie sunbathers. Oh, and the town was pretty cool, too, and the tapas was second to none.

From San Sebanners, it was off to a little town called Castro Urdiales, which only gets a mention because it is the site of my most expensive coffee ever, at 5 Euros, I think it was. And it wasn't even hot! Bastards.

After recovering from the expensive coffee, we headed to Salamanca. It is a brilliant town, rich with history of war and education. It was an absolutely beautiful place, and we treated ourselves to hostels and spent a few days reading books and lazily ambling around the town.

Next it was back to Barcelona to meet up with the energetic, the engaged, Aaron and Leah. We spent a few fantastic days exploring the sights of Barcelona. It was great to see all of Gaudi's architecture around the city but the real highlight was having someone to talk movies with again! It was just after Mel the Smell's arrest so we had plenty to discuss. It was great to see the two of them again after so long and went a long way towards easing any feelings of homesickness.

In a touching moment, Azza asked me to be best man at his wedding in front of the Olympic Stadium and I said yes. He had me at hello.

I would go on longer but my fingers just won't let me. I'll save Naomi's 'getting mugged' story for another time and leave you with a preview...

One woman... Three gypsies... One handsome Spanish cop... One jealous boyfriend
This holiday season... get ready... to be taken for a ride.
'DONDE ESTA EL POLICE STATION?'
copyright 2006