Wednesday 28 February 2007

Smelly Sydney

Feb 28th

I felt pretty ill today, especially when I first woke up. I may be coming down with flu. But I still went to work, because I’m a hero and the company, no, in fact the sector, would collapse without me. And I felt like bestowing future sick days on my co-workers...that's the kind of gal I am.

If it is flu, I hope my blocked nose develops soon. The good thing about having an ailment that stuffs up your nose is that I can travel on Sydney public transport without gagging. This morning, everybody on the bus seemed to have eaten lots of garlic last night. Stale, morning-after garlic – disgusting. Sydney certainly is full of smelly people. They especially like to travel by train. The air is a fermenting cocktail of fart smells, putrid halitosis, unwashed hair, sweated-out-last-night’s mutton vindaloo, and a little bit of good, honest BO. Actually the BO is a refreshing change. You don’t get that too often. The worst is the halitosis. A large proportion of train passengers – sorry, we call them ‘customers’ now – have the worst, gut-rotting, zombie breath you can imagine. Seriously, the cat smells better than the people I commute with. I'd prefer to travel with a bus full of giant, human-size cats.

Picture it. It’s the morning. I’ve showered, washed and blow-dried my hair, flossed,brushed my teeth and applied some lovely scented body cream from Lush and a bit of perfume. Then I get on the bus. The air is thick with a stench you can practically see, and it’s trying to infiltrate me. Yeeeeuuch! Sometimes I worry that the foul fug will somehow stick to me; maybe it'll get caught in my hair and follow me into the office.

Why are the people here so stinky? Are they in fact stinkier than other people? Certainly, I must have inhaled more farts in the time I've been in Sydney than in the whole rest of my life. But then again, I've never lived in a big city before. Maybe all cities are like this, because of the concentration of people. Or maybe I'm just unnaturally clean. Or maybe I smell bad too and I just don't know it.

I'm going to have a bath. I need to wind down anyway. I'm supposed to be tired because I'm 'coming down with something' and I have to take care of myself.

Monday 26 February 2007

Bad Cat

I’ve just been reading the news on the BBC. It’s funny, there’s rarely anything about Australia on there. Even Papua New Guinea gets more news coverage, though to be fair, those stories usually involve Australia in some way. Yet Australians seem to think that Australia is world power number 2, after the US. Australia is America’s number 1 ally! It’s kind of cute. But then, it does make me wonder, are we British similarly deluded when we think Tony Blair is Bush’s right hand man. I think the answer to that is no.

This weekend was a bit of a non-event. My very own right hand man got sick with flu – as opposed to a cold that he thinks is flu, and was really quite ill on Saturday. So I was running round Sydney doing all the household shopping on my own, and had to take care of him. I didn’t mind though. He’s sort of sweet when he’s ill! The cat decided that it would take up a vigil and sat next to him on the sofa for the entire weekend, and proceeded to sleep nearly the whole time. Except for one memorable moment when I wandered into the kitchen to find her crouched on the counter, licking at the roast chicken I had cooling there. Of course, I then harried her out of the house. This morning I caught her up there as well. She fixed me with a cool, level stare that said “I’m going to make a point of this.” Once again I chased her out, screaming, and scrubbed down the surface with tea tree oil. Honestly, I know I’m a pushover for that cat, but does she really think she can wear me down to the point where I’ll tolerate a cat strolling around the kitchen surfaces and sampling our dinners whenever it takes her fancy? Sometimes I think she has a most unnatural intelligence, but at times like these, I’m not so sure.

Friday 23 February 2007

J.S. Mill and The Thought Police

I was reading the news headlines being broadcast in the lifts in my office building this morning (they’re that kind of lift) and was depressed to learn that a state in Malaysia is going to introduce a special undercover agency to spy on young unmarried lovers and report back to the Islamic authorities. What a charming place it must be. Well, Malaysia’s been off my holiday destination wish list for some time now so it’s not my problem. It does make me sad though, every time I read about some horrible regime oppressing its citizens, or citizens oppressing each other. I hate to think of that stuff going on on the same planet as me. Besides, nastiness is contagious, don’t you think? They should all read ‘On Liberty’ by John Stuart Mill. I recently read about half of it (it started to get repetitive so I took it back home to the library) and loved it. In fact I think it should be obligatory reading for everyone. No-one should be allowed to have an opinion until they’ve read it. Uhhhhm…or have I completely lost the point of his message. Sometimes I think it would be nicer to be an animal and not have to live with bloody people. Except that it’s probably worse for animals as we abuse them and are doing our best to wipe out their habitat whilst patting ourselves on the back for preserving a few of each species in zoos.

Mill’s thoughts are roughly thus: A person’s liberty should only be curtailed by governments, and indeed the establishment, insofar as his actions would damage other people to the detriment of their liberty. It sounds obvious to us today, I think, but he had lots more interesting things to say as well. He discussed freedom of speech at length, saying not only should we have unlimited freedom to express dissent, but in fact, minority voices are to be welcomed simply by virtue of being a minority, however crazy their views. Even if society is sure that the prevailing opinion is justified, discussing unpopular opinions can only enrich us, by exercising our mental faculties and confirming our beliefs. He says, there’s no point coming to a conclusion – and this includes religious beliefs – and then banning debate on the subject, as if the case was closed. Because then we would subsequently begin to forget the reasons for our belief, and the belief itself would have less meaning, and if the situation changed we would not notice that our belief needed to be altered. When he talks about banning debate, he means not just legal restrictions but also pressure from society. People must be free to air their opinions without fear of such consequences as losing their jobs.

That reminded me of my university days. I went to uni with the expectation, as so many do, that I was entering a special a special and enlightened world, where everyone would sit around discussing concepts without fear or prejudice, and where the only goal was to break down thoughts to their logical limits; to discover….THE TRUTH. Like Socrates and his followers, we’d don loose clothing and sit around the campus lawns in little circles, happily reasoning the hours away. Oh, how wrong I was. Lesson number 1 was: you do not violate the PC. You just don’t. If you don’t know what the accepted system of beliefs is, you’d better learn fast. Some things, you are not allowed to say, even as the devil’s advocate, even in the interests of understanding something. I don’t know if you were allowed to think other stuff, maybe nobody cared, but you sure as hell couldn’t say it. The whole place was a controversy free zone – with, of course, the smug self-assurance that piercings and freaky hair made them ooooooooh, so radical and challenging to society, like, my God, no-one’s ever seen a fat teenager with gaudy hair and a lip ring before. Mill said those with unpopular opinions should be welcomed for the challenge they bring to our complacency; in my university they wanted to be complacent. Mill said, what if the uncomfortable opinions turned out to be the truth? Nobody at my university wanted to hear uncomfortable opinions, possibly in case they turned out to be the truth. They had an image of how Britain had to be, and they didn’t want anyone to spoil it for them. I felt that not only in the general student body, but even in the classroom. These young people were so self-righteous it could make you sick. No wonder people hate students. I used to wish the peasants would rise and lynch the bloody lot of them.

My experience at university gave me a very real sense that if the country were to be taken over by a despotic regime, they could probably rely on the nation’s middle class youth to police it for them. No wonder Hitler had the Hitler Youth. He knew what he was doing! Even at the time, I could have believed ‘New Labour’ was vetting the student intake. They were always ready to trot out the party line - it doesn’t take too big a leap of the imagination to picture the more zealous students taking to the streets with sticks and enforcing party discipline on the general population. How did they get that way? Do the state schools have a brainwashing program?

Anyway, I don’t know if I made ‘On Liberty’ sound attractive but it was good. It must have been good because I managed to enjoy it even though I was reading it in 5 minute instalments snatched on buses. I kept smiling widely and thinking how pleased I was I was reading it. Though it could have had something to do with the fact that it’s the first decent book I’ve read in ages. My reading is usually limited to American romances with stupidly-named heroines who stomp and scream at people and call the heroes ‘buster’ and ‘pal’ and have ‘cute asses’. God, I hate the books I read sometimes. I threw the last one out in disgust because I couldn’t bear to have it in the same house as me.

Wednesday 21 February 2007

Big Ships part 3

As usual I did things the hard way. I knocked off work at 5:15 and spent the next 4 hours running around Sydney taking wrong turnings, panicking, sweating, panting, fatiguing most of the muscles in my body, mysteriously losing huge chunks of time, wondering why the hell I was lost in the urban jungle at 7:02 instead of standing on the Harbour Bridge taking excellent video footage of the lovely QE2 blowing its horn at the QM2 as it sailed past.

Crapness aside, there were also a lot of great moments. I went to Woolloomooloo to see the QM2, and then I saw the QE2 arrive at Circular Quay from the vantage point of the bridge. What a fantastic atmosphere! The water was teaming with excited vessels, and every time the QE2 sounded its horn, like the rumble of the Martian carriers in ‘The War of the Worlds’, it was answered by showers of rather less impressive tooting from all the surrounding boats. What wholesome fun!

I was also lucky enough to have a great spot for the fireworks. I positioned myself on one side of the Opera House steps, having a vague idea that they were being set off on the eastern side and not the west, in which case I’d have seen NOTHING AT ALL and cursed myself for a day of stupidity. Anyway, it was a great spot and I even managed to pick up some good photos with the camera. After they’d finished the crowd applauded, all the boats sounded their horns and flashed their lights in appreciation. I love that about Sydney, how people love their fireworks and are generous about showing it.

Finally, I met up with my dear partner and he kindly told me, about a million times, that I’d have had a much easier time of it if I’d simply gone to Mrs Macquarie’s Chair after work and stayed there. I’d have seen the QM2 up close, been able to watch the QE2 coming past, and then had an even more magnificent view of the fireworks. I was truly indebted to him for pointing out how easily I could have avoided the sweaty nightmare of the previous four hours and how unbelievably clueless I am with geographical orientation despite having lived here for two and half years. Chatting pleasantly on this and related topics, we made our way to Mrs Macquarie’s Chair and sat on the grass for a while, looking at the brightly lit QM2 and taking pictures. I was so tired by the time we went home!

Big Ships part 2

Feb 20th

I woke up at 6:05 this morning. It was still dark. I lay quietly for a few minutes, contemplating the feelings my dream had left behind, then I heard the foghorn of a big ship, and I remembered – the QM2 had arrived! It was surprisingly loud considering how far away it was.

So I put on the television and there it was, on breakfast TV, huge, majestic, all lit up in the dawn, pushing slowly through the harbour. Again, it sounded its horn, three times, and it carried all the way to my house. It was so exciting! Imagine being on board, and every city you go to, all these little boats come out to meet you and everyone’s got up early and is lining the coast, cheering you, and helicopters are flying overhead, and you’re all over breakfast TV, live. Now that’s a welcome!

I decided I was going to take a different route to work, taking the train that goes past Woolloomooloo. But, bright spark that I am, when I boarded the empty train I FORGOT to sit on the right side. So I made my way to the doors thinking I could look out of the windows there, but this annoying woman got on and planted herself directly in front of me. I ended up standing in the corridor downstairs, bending over to try and peer over all the seated people and out of the window. Don’t think for a minute that these people were all as eager as me to see out, and were thankful for their superior vantage points. Oh no. You should have seen the gormless, stodgy lot of them, sitting their like cold puddings, gawping straight ahead. Was I furious? Oh yes. Did I see the ship? Sort of. Never mind. I’ll see it tonight and it will be great.

Monday 19 February 2007

Big ships

Tomorrow morning the Queen Elizabeth II and the Queen Mary II make their way into Sydney Harbour. I’m pretty excited about it. I saw the QEII when it was at Circular Quay last year. It was gorgeous! I went down one evening with my digital camera and got some lovely pictures of it looking all sleek and classy and cosy. The QMII is much bigger so I’m preparing to be extra-impressed! I’ve bookmarked a web page that tells you all the awe-inspiring facts and I keep visiting it in order to maintain my excitement levels. For example: Just think! If it sailed up to the Harbour Bridge and you were standing on the bridge, you would be face to face with some of the passengers! Jeez that’s big!

The QMII is coming first. It enters the Harbour at around 6:30 a.m. Now, I could arrange to go to work very early and watch it, either from the bridge or from our amazing THIRTY-FIFTH FLOOR auditorium. It will be wonderful and exciting, I’m sure. On the other hand, is it worth getting up at 5:00? It’s quite clear to me what the answer to that question is so I’ll make do with going down to see it after work instead. There are going to be celebrations and fireworks. I must make sure I have my camera set to wide view. It’s great living in Sydney sometimes!

Tuesday 6 February 2007

I'm pretty excited about having my first ever blog! As you will see from its crude appearance, I haven't the faintest idea what I'm doing, but I'm hoping to learn on the job.

(Edited later:) I was going to write more here but suddenly about five birds appeared at the window, screeching, so I had to go outside and see what was going on. A local cat who's adopted us had brought a live young bird to the doorstep. It didn't end well. An inauspicious beginning to the blog.