Never go back

I cannot shake the feeling that working for Cirque again has been a mistake.

The good memories that I once had have now being replaced by the grim realities of an organisation that appears to have lost its once beautiful soul.  In the past, all of us who worked for Cirque used to describe the atmosphere as having a "Cirque magic".  There was almost a feeling of joy being involved with Cirque and I cherished every moment that I was able to work.  It reached a point where even travelling to work elicited a feeling of excitement in me.

This atmosphere that captured my imagination (with my willing acceptance) seems to have disappeared.

In its place I find myself in a business, but it is an ordinary business.  There doesn't seem to be anything special or unique about this business and that is the most crushing thing of all.  The Cirque I once knew was far more than just a business, it was an organisation truly dedicated to the "show" and to the experience of the customer.

And yet, I cannot help but wonder about how much of the problem lies not the organisation and its undoubted changes but with myself.  I couldn't help but think back to a passage from one of my favourite books, "Keep the Aspidistra Flying" by George Orwell.

"It is like bathing for a second time on a summer day. However warm the day is, however much you have enjoyed your first bathe, you are always sorry for it if you go in a second time."

I have undoubtedly changed.  I have matured and grown with the passing of time as you would expect.  I wonder if this means that things can never be the same when you go back?  Does it mean that the old memories always linger like brambles that overwhelm the possibilities of new joys growing?

Some time in the sun

I never thought I would work for Cirque du Soleil again.

I had come to think of Cirque as something confined to my past.  I looked back on it with fond memories, but it was slowly slipping out of the range of what I could firmly grasp.  The experiences were becoming  faded and the emotions more distant.  I was even reaching the point where even some of the names of those I had previously worked with were becoming unfamiliar.  I was actually starting to forget names of some of those whom I had shared amazing experiences with.

So, when I found out that Cirque was returning to Australia with a new tour, I didn't pay too much attention.  It had been years since I had been able to watch a Cirque show and I had even overlooked going to the arena version of Saltimbanco when it had come through Sydney.  I sent a few emails to see if any friends were working the upcoming show, but that was mainly to organise catch ups and possible free tickets.

Then suddenly, a few changes in circumstances at my "real" job suddenly altered what was possible.  A change in my working hours now meant that working nights and weekends at Cirque was once again something within my realm of possibility.

This was an opportunity that was too good to pass up.  It was a serendipitous combination of events that was not going to happen again.  It meant a bit of extra money, the ability to watch some shows for free and a chance to meet some new people.  I couldn't think of any downside to this idea at all.....

Excuse me while I snus

This stuff isn't for the weak of spirit.

It will send your heart beat soaring and make your breath smell like you've eaten an ash tray.

Yet this seems to be one of the most beloved of the Scandinavian traditions.

I'm not even sure why there was a packet of snus in my apartment.  It was sitting there waiting to be used though, so I thought I might as well fulfill its destiny and make use of it.  I grabbed one of the tiny little packets of fun out of the box and jammed it into my upper lip.

It wasn't long at all before I could feel the surge of nicotine going to my head.  The taste of tobacco was swirling in my mouth and I was fairly confident that I had received about as much enjoyment that I was going to get from my snus.

I spat it out and put the box away.

An epic meal time?

My housemates and I have a tendency to get caught up in silly trends and fads.

The latest one on our radar was the YouTube show, "Epic Meal Time".  A show where outrageous food monstrosities are created, often with copious amounts of bacon and booze.

We were so enamoured with the outrageous antics of the guys on the show, we even succumbed to the powerful lure of merchandising.

We purchased the bacon flavoured spread they sell online.

It seemed like an excellent idea at the time.

However, like so many other ideas that seemed incredible at the time they were first thought up, this one turned out to be the disappointed that only bacon flavoured spread could be.

As funny as the purchase was, the bottle now lies untouched and unloved in the back of the fridge.  I am fairly certain it won't be leaving that spot for quite some time.

Unexpected kindness

I am constantly amazed by the kindness that friends can display.

I was just sitting around in the cold, minding my own business and thinking about making tea when I my housemates dropped a parcel on my lap that had arrived for me in the mail.

I wasn't expecting anything, so I wasn't certain if this was going to be my untimely end or a gigantic pile of bills.  Whatever it was, my sense of dread and fear was growing.

Instead I found presents!

Swedish styled presents sent all the way from France to Australia.  Everything themed with a moose.

The kindness shown to me definitely created an unexpected mix of feelings.  I was of course incredibly happy at the thoughtfulness of my dear friends to think of me enough to send me presents, but I also felt petty and small.  I thought about all the times I had complained or sulked over relatively meaningless things and then contrasted it to this act of generosity.

People who say that we shouldn't concern ourselves with little things in life are wrong.  The little things we do are often the finest things of all.  Hopefully I will use this as a reminder to do these things more myself.

Pisco

Farewells are tough.

For me they are a constant reminder of the limited time we have with those around us.  My time in Sydney seems to have been largely spent with people who are only in town for a short time.  I have not regretted the opportunity it has provided me to expand my understanding of the world, but the constant rotation of the social scene can get a bit tiring.

The most recent farewell was for friends I had met through my masters program, some Swiss people and someone from Peru.

The catering for the event was distinctly South American.  We had cheesy empanadas made by the Peruvian girl herself  as well as many bottles of pisco from her family property.

The pisco was something else.  Lethal and powerful, it is not something I can imagine myself ever turning into a habit.

The night began to hurtle out of control with the ample encouragement of the pisco, but in a good way.  Saying goodbye is always tough, so it's important to ensure that it isn't forgotten and that it's done properly.

Hotel to Hotel

The miserable weather in Melbourne wasn't a major surprise.  After all, Melbourne is a city with the deserved reputation of often having "four seasons in a day".  Arriving late in the night in the awful weather had added my feeling of exhaustion, so I was happy to collapse into the hotel room.  Work had decided to put me up at the Stamford, which was nice of them, and I was given another nice surprise by the suite they gave me.

I hadn't realised it immediately, but this was actually the same hotel that I had first stayed in when I had begun my working life.

The suite I had been given also looked identical to the suite I had stayed in previously as well (probably because it was indeed identical....)

Sitting in the room gave me a sense of nostalgia for my earlier working days.  I couldn't help but think of how much I had developed professionally and personally in that relatively short space of time.

I had also clearly lost some of my sense for adventure and fun as when I checked out of the hotel, I decided to move a few streets over into another hotel for the weekend instead of into a hostel as I had once done.

I wasn't even completely sure why I had made this decision.

As I have noted in the past, there was much of the same sameness to everything.  The location of the place was convenient, but I am certain that there would be hostels in the area that would offer similar convenience.

The biggest problem I find with the higher level of comfort would have to be that it creates a draw on you to stay in.

Why go traipsing off into the cold and uncertain world when you have your own warm and private space with satellite television?  If I'm going to be somewhere different, my aim should always be to explore, to see something different.

Looking out the window of the hotel really doesn't suffice.

Hidden in the laneways

Australia is a small country and yet there are still distinct cultural differences between the regions.  Going to Melbourne provides a nice change from the superficial obsessions of Sydney.  It's by no means innocent of being superficial, but the mood is definitely more alternative.  There is a darker approach to dress and far less skin on show than in Sydney.

Melbourne is also far more well known for its cafes than Sydney.  To be more specific, Melbourne is more famous for both its cafes and the unique locations of these cafes.

Melbourne has "laneways" that have become one of the greatest selling points of the city.  The unique design of the city provided its CBD with numerous small alleys and streets that have been utilised by city planners as perfect locations for small shops, restaurants and cafes.  These laneways are intimate settings full of life and a busy atmosphere that belies the more relaxed impression that Australia generally gives.

They are kind of fantastic.

I was sitting with a friend on Degraves St, one of the more famous of the laneways having breakfast on a cold and wet winter's morning in Melbourne.  It was busy and noisy.  There was a constant flow of people moving through the street which I love.

These streets reinforced my firm view that Melbourne is a better winter city than Sydney.  In Sydney, winter often feels like a time that is merely spent waiting for summer.  In Melbourne, there is a real culture that is made for social life in the colder months.

The life of these streets is hard to pass up.  They are one of the best parts of Melbourne and of Australia as a whole.  I only wish that there was something comparable in Sydney (particularly when it gets cold).

Undercover football

Visiting Melbourne is something I don't do anywhere near enough.  For me, going to Melbourne for work meant being able to get a fix Australian football that doesn't involve the Sydney Swans (something that is a rarity for me).

So after work on a cold winter's night, my friends and I from work all made our way on the tram down towards Etihad Stadium down at Melbourne's docklands.  It was still relatively early, so we went into a pub next to the stadium for a beer and a dinner of chicken parmigiana (I was trying to keep things nice and Victorian after all).

The atmosphere was good.  This was a standard Friday night in Melbourne, and the crowd was slowly gathering for the game. At the pub, supporters from both teams as well as the non-partisan like myself were laughing and talking.  I was surprised by the mix of the crowd.  There were the usual groups of men engaging in the light hearted banter, but there were also groups of women having dinner all decked out in their supporters' apparel, families, couples as well as people from all different ethnic groups.  It was a refreshing thing to see and once again reaffirmed my view that sport (at its best) can play a truly uniting role in a community.

As game time approached, we made our way with the crowds through the cold winds and into the stadium.  This was the first time I had ever been to Etihad Stadium, so I was looking forward to seeing what it was like for myself.  Aussie Rules fans love the MCG, but are generally ambivalent about Etihad.  One of the common criticisms of the stadium being that it lacked the atmosphere of its more illustrious older brother.

Personally I thought it was great.

I was watching Carlton play Geelong, so I had no vested interest in the match and I was able to sit in the perfect climate controlled stadium without feeling the least bit cold.

Looking around the stands, it was also perfectly clear to me that this stadium offered excellent views to the crowd no matter where they were seated.

The modern touch of this stadium is a far cry from my childhood spent shivering in the miserable wet and cold of Waverley.  It is more clinical and sterile than the football I remember, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.  My memories are probably seen through rose coloured glasses as I don't seem to remember the painful trials involved in watching football such as trying to find your car after the game at Waverley.  Still, it was nice to be able to reconnect with some things that don't seem to change as one of my mates and I grabbed a bag of hot jam donuts to eat while we watched the game.  

I'm a graduate (again!)

Time feels like it is slipping through my fingers.  I say this because of what seems like an ever increasing speed at which my life is moving forward.  Days seem to pass by very quickly, as do the weeks and even the months.  I now seem to experience the terrifying days where I find myself incredibly busy and the day is over without me even fully realising that anything has happened.  There is a repetition that kills the uniqueness of each day, that turns it into something more akin to the rotation of gears than an actual individual moment of beauty it should be.

I think back to when I was a child and how even the thought of having to wait a single hour for anything would be tantamount to torture.  Yet now, I seem to want the opposite.  I want to slow the time, I want to turn the water through my fingers into molasses, yet with no success.  This is concerning to me as I constantly wonder and fret over whether I am doing enough with my life.  I question whether or not I am actually taking hold of the moments I have been blessed with and using them for something worthwhile.  Yet even this has its challenges as I am forced to decide between the investments for the future and acting for the present.

I now found myself in one of those situations where I was once again questioning whether I had made the correct decision in how I had used my time.

I was graduating from university again.

I now had a Masters of Law from the University of New South Wales.

I had enjoyed the opportunity to study again, but it had not been easy.  There had been significant sacrifices that had been made to ensure that I was able to undertake both the studying and the work to a successful degree without negatively impacting the other.  I had found myself locked in study labs and in front of computers working when others were out enjoying themselves.  I had been forced to concentrate in isolation as others were enjoying the company of friends and family.  I could even clearly remember the times when my housemates tried to convince me to the go to the beach and I was forced to turn them down so that I could read journal articles instead.

The sense of achievement was definitely still there.  It was the cliched feeling of reaching the end of a journey, but with more finality.  I had never expected to have completed my masters (and definitely not so quickly), so there was also satisfaction in knowing that I had hit another milestone unexpectedly.  The only problem was the continued nagging thought in my head of whether this was the "correct" milestone to be hitting.  Had I had made the right decision?  Had I sprinted in the right direction or had I merely placed myself even further from the destination that I ultimately wanted to arrive at?

Sitting in the audience, I was lucky enough to find that the guest speaker was George Williams.  The famous George Williams who wrote the constitutional law textbooks that filled me with pain and terror during my undergraduate years.  He was not what I expected at all.  He was not the old and grey professor I had imagined, but was instead an open minded progressive.  Who would have thought it?

As I sat and listened to Prof Williams speak, I found myself actually being interested by what he was saying (another shocking surprise I did not expect from my graduation).  He spoke of failure.  He spoke of the need to fail and how often he had failed in life.  He spoke about how it was only through the constant failure that he had eventually succeeded.  I contemplated this message silently in my seat.  Failure was truly inescapable, but it was still more difficult to rationalise it when I struggled to decide what I considered to be success.

And now for something completely different

I am a dedicated fan of Aussie Rules Football.  It is something that I have grown up with.  My upbringing is so ingrained with Aussie Rules that it almost seems to be a part of my personality (and I'm sure that many people would attest to that fact).

There are few other sports that interest me and there are many others that I look down on with disdain and contempt.

One of those sports is Rugby League.

I have never understood the attraction of this sport that seems to me to be so two dimensional.  The two lines of men running at each other with the constant repetition did not create any drama or tension for me.  Instead of trying to embrace it, I actively railed against it.  Being a Victorian transplant, stuck in the middle of NSW/ACT, my love of Aussie Rules and disdain for Rugby League became like a badge for me.  It was a constant reminder that no matter how much time went by, I would never fully integrate.

This all left me in an awkward position when I was asked by a friend at work to attend a Rugby League game.

I really didn't want to go.

However, I also knew that as this was something I had never tried before, it was a new experience I shouldn't be passing up.

I agreed to go.

On a Monday night (yes, a MONDAY NIGHT) after work, we all set off on the train to the middle of Sydney to watch the Canterbury Bulldogs play the Cronulla Sharks.  

The crowd was small, but passionate.

I couldn't help but compare it to the enormous crowds I was used to seeing at the Aussie Rules games.  Still, the atmosphere was good.

What definitely surprised me was that I enjoyed myself.  It was impressive to watch the spectacle of the game and to hear the noise of the tackling.  It was very clear from the sound that these were by no means painless encounters.

I walked away from the game with a different view (which is always important).  I hadn't become a fan of the sport, but I definitely had a new found respect for it that wasn't previously there. 

Breakfast of champions

They always say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

Who "they" are is completely unknown to me.  However, I'm fairly certain that "they" probably wouldn't approve of my standard breakfast of a croissant at my desk as I check my emails.

They probably wouldn't be so happy with Andy's version of a nutritious breakfast either.

On this chosen day, breakfast for Andy consisted of some standards.  He poured himself a cup of orange juice, then he made himself an espresso.

Then he microwaved a plate full of left over pan fried dumplings.

Pork dumplings.  Truly the most nutritious way to start your day.

Legoland

Growing up, there were always the kids who loved Meccano and the kids who loved Lego.

Then, there were always the kids who would make and eat mud pies .... (a practice I found to be bizarre even in my youngest years).

For me?  I loved Lego when I was a kid.

The steel and bolts of Meccano was too cold and unfeeling.  There was a sharpness to it all that I didn't like.

Lego on the other hand was colourful and welcoming.  It was like a real life cartoon that had the benefit of being interactive.

Sitting in the middle of Martin Place in Sydney having lunch with my friend Philipp, I was happy to see the Lego forest that had sprouted overnight.

I couldn't help but feel as though I had reverted to childhood.  I was clearly wandering around inside my memories.  I definitely missed it.  Lego for me was an intrinsic part of my childhood and the end of  the time I spent with it almost directly coincided with my move to boarding school (which I consider to this day as being when I began to grow up).

Being around so much Lego made me long for something that was still neatly stored in boxes in my parents' house and yet could never actually  be found again.

The only thing missing were some Lego pirate men and some Lego knights.

An iconic beach

Being asked to organise an event for work is very often a pain.  It usually entails additional work with little to no recognition.

However, there can definitely be situations where the benefits outweigh the hard work.

For one thing, it means that you are able to control where it is you go and what it is you do.

More importantly, it means you get to arrange the allocation of rooms!

All things being equal, that meant that I got a lovely room with an ocean view.

The room itself was a bit older, but that wasn't a real concern to me.

In fact, I think I actually preferred it.  As I've said numerous times before, the bland ultra modern hotels seem  to lack soul and feeling.  Rather than make me feel at ease, the rooms they offer make me feel cold and alone.  I hardly see this as being a recipe for successfully providing comfort to patrons who are often traveling, by themselves and away from those they care about.

This room was a bit rougher than some of the other places I've been in lately.

The furniture was not perfectly matched.  It was a bit old fashioned.  The bathroom was tiled from floor to ceiling in a truly awful colour of off-white.

And yet I liked it.

I liked  the old wooden furniture that looked like it had been used.  I liked the couches that had clearly been sat in.  It actually felt like someone had been in the room at some point.

Of course, it also helped that the view from my balcony wasn't too bad.

Or rather, it was amazing.

This was the first time that I had the pleasure of staying in Bondi.  The weather was cool, so the beach front felt a bit sleepy.  There was a mood of a beach resort in winter, which I guess is what Bondi is during the cooler months.

It didn't stop me swimming.  Once I had a break from work, I rushed down to the beach and jumped into the water.  Looking north and then south up the long expanse of Bondi's sands, devoid of its usual crowds, it was peaceful.

Giants awaken

How often do you get to attend something truly historic?

How often is it that you are able to attend an event that you can say has never happened before?

You may think that this may occur when you have attended the "last" of something, but very often those things can change or revert.  My university days are a good example of that.  I thought I was done and dusted when I walked out of my final exams.  I celebrated, I partied and I even spent moments contemplating the time that had past.

This was a short lived "last" though, as within three years, I was back at a different university doing my masters.

Being at the FIRST time for an event, that is an entirely different situation.  Nothing can take that "first" away.  Once it's happened for the first time, it's locked in.  There can be no reverting and there can be no going back.

I was very excited to be at the very first AFL game for the Greater Western Sydney Giants!  A new franchise entering the AFL.

I was also fortunate that I was able to share this event with my good friends Philipp and Dana.  I had met them both through my LLM studies.  Having come all the way to Sydney from Switzerland, they were keen to get more of a taste of Australia.  Attending AFL games would be perfect for that.

So I had two firsts all set up.  The first ever GWS Giants game in the AFL and the first ever AFL game for my Swiss friends.

The day went off without a hitch (except for the crushing defeat of the Giants).

I had been part of something historic and I had been able to introduce my friends to something new, and incredibly, they loved it!

Seasonal Affective Disorder

Well this is just awful.

Summer is Sydney is what makes it worthwhile to live in this city devoid of culture and character.  It's meant to be the best time to be in Sydney.  It's the time that makes me forget about the long period in the middle of the year when the entire city seems to go underground, waiting for the sun to reemerge with its warmth.

Something was dreadfully amiss though.  My precious Sydney summer was being robbed from me and in its place was rain.

It was a never ending gloom.  It was a rain that was seeming into the cracks in the walls and seemed to be melting the buildings themselves.

I was finding it hard to write as well.  My posting for this blog was months behind the times.  I have often read about how many artists and writers find themselves most productive during times of anguish and suffering.  I am by no means an artist (or even a real writer), but I was not fortunate enough to experience any such surge in creative output.

Instead, all I had was a never ending pall hanging over my mood.  I was suffering some pretty major SAD and I was a complete loss as to how to fix it.

The Little Master

Cricket is fantastic isn't it?

I mean this seriously.  It's just an amazing concept in our modern world.

We may be rushing about and in a constant hurry.  There may be a constant demand for things to be delivered immediately and for the latest trends to fervently adhered to.  Life seems to be rushed at an ever increasing rate.

Not with cricket though.  In this game from another era, a slower pace of life seems to take over.  A more ordered and refined approach towards sport that doesn't involve violence or injuries reigns supreme.

I was lucky enough to have landed some tickets to the 3rd day of the Sydney test match.

They weren't any ordinary tickets, they were highly sought after member's tickets.

I was also lucky enough to be there for Australia vs India.  Two cricketing power houses between whom no love was lost.

I didn't realise how lucky I was going to be though.

The 3rd day of the test was where I was going to see history unfolding.  The beginning of something enormous, and the end of the something even bigger.

Australia was still batting....

.... and they just kept batting.

Nothing was going to stop them.

So much so that Michael Clarke ended up with 329 not out.  A new personal best.  A new record knock at the Sydney Cricket Ground.

I've never been a fan of Michael Clarke, but this was an achievement that deserved a standing ovation.

With the end of the Australian inning, it was time for India to start.

The Indian batting had struggled on this tour and this day would be no different.

Within a short amount of time, the opening batsmen were walking back to the pavilion.

This gave me a chance to see two of the greatest cricket players of all time for the first, and more than likely, last time.

First the great Rahul Dravid arrived.  Famously known as "the Wall", he hadn't had a good tour of Australia and it was clear that time had ravaged his formerly daunting defences.  Holes had clearly begun to appear in the Wall....

Soon, the Wall fell over.

This gave me the chance to see one of the most famous cricket players of all time.  A man who is literally worshiped as a god in his home country.  Sachin Tendulkar was walking onto the SCG!

The entire crowd rose as one to applaud his entrance.

He was the opponent, he was the star, but it didn't matter.  His career was what was being honoured.  Everyone was clapping as a sign of respect and reverence.

Watching it all occur, it seemed like a throwback to the past.  Seeing Tendulkar confidently walking into the middle of the stadium to the standing clapping made him appear almost regal and chivalrous.  With gloves on and his bat under his arm, he was like a knight slowly walking off into his final joust.

Another Christmas in Coogee

I love Christmas.

It really is my favourite time of year.  It's a time for both a celebration as well as a bit of a relax.

Work becomes a bit easier (not in the literal sense) when you're surrounded by the cheerful smiles of people looking forward to a break.

Everyone is in a celebratory mood and moving from party to party.

In the Southern hemisphere, we're also greeted by the warm embrace of summer.  In Sydney, that means the beach is once again open for use after many months of taunting us.

This all adds up to mean that this is a season where a weight is lifted off your shoulders and you're able to relax the next months away.

That is unless you place the weight straight back on yourself!

Christmas doesn't just happen!  It takes a lot of work and preparation!

So while I was happy that this was a more relaxed time of year, it in no way meant that I wasn't going to be well prepared for Christmas day and the fun times that I was going to create for all my friends.  The first thing to do was to ensure that I was surrounded by the appropriate amount of Christmas cheer.  This required tinsel.  Lots and lots of tinsel.  It required decorations and random Christmas related paraphernalia splashed everywhere.   I wanted my apartment to look like Santa Clause had thrown up in it.

With some help from the Irish, I was able to get the apartment looking truly gaudy!

With that task done, Christmas day itself began to approach.

This meant another sterling edition of "Christmas in Coogee".

This year's would be our most multicultural yet, with guests from Australia, Austria, Ireland, Switzerland, France, Germany and the United States.

Just like other Christmas in Coogee celebrations, it was also going to be a lot of work.  This year, even more so than others.  With a guest list pushing 20 and a lack of the help I normally received from Andy and Josh, the work necessary for this year's merriment was going to be done almost exclusively by myself.

A couple of days before the lunch, I began to cook.

Several components of what I was making for the lunch required preparations to be done well in advance.  I needed to make some sponge cakes, bake some pavlovas, make the stuffing and prep the turkey.  This was all in addition to the fruit cake that I had been soaking in brandy for the past 6 weeks as well.

Finally, the actual day arrived.

I woke up nice and early and began the process of baking, peeling, stuffing, boiling, frying and chopping (not in that order of course) necessary for everything to come together. 

It was tough.  I even needed to employ the services of an extra oven at a friend's place to ensure that everything was cooked on time.

Once everything was finished, I wandered out and found myself a seat with everyone else.

Crackers were cracked, hats were put on and the celebrations began in earnest.

Summer had been unseasonably cold.  So of course on the day of Christmas in Coogee, we found ourselves facing a rather warm weather.  I wasn't going to let this discourage my appetite though.

Food and drink were clearly making a positive mark on the gathered crowd.  I've always been of the firm opinion that food not only brings people together, but it has the ability to put people at ease.  So when combined with the free flowing drinks, the day was set.  Fans were put on full blast to counter the heat and everyone was attacking the mountain of food I had prepared (a mountain that had grown even larger when we received an Irish contribution of a full leg of roasted ham).

My intention had been to put people into a food coma.

After about the third helping of everything, I could see that people were slowing down and beginning to get a bit groggy.

It was at this point that I did my big reveal.

I hit everyone with a double dessert.

Pavlova and trifle (and of course, the trifle was full of brandy).

I could see the look of horror on everyone's face as they realised they hadn't left enough room for dessert.  This was but a small obstacle though, and when the plates of dessert were passed around, no one declined.

As they began to eat the desserts, one of the Irish girls immediately noticed the amount of brandy that was in the trifle and asked me in mild shock: "Has there been anything in this meal that doesn't have booze in it?"

I had a simple response for her.

"No."

Shortest visit ever

I was drowsy and cranky when I arrived in Hong Kong.

Swiss Airlines clearly had an amazing sense of humour when they decided to put me in the middle seat between what seemed to be two rugby players.

As we landed at Chek Lap Kok airport, the last thing I had in mind was allowing myself to stay within the confines of its walls.

I had time.  Only 4 hours till my connecting flight back to Sydney, but I still had time.

I quickly jumped on the airport train link and within 15 minutes I was in the middle of Hong Kong.

This gave me about an hour to have dinner with Josh.

He had only move to HK recently and was keen to give me a tour of his new apartment.

It was a very quick tour as I soon had to race back towards the train station and back to the airport.

I cleared customs and passport control and was soon back in an uncomfortable seat, heading back to home and the feeling of dread that comes with knowing that work is about to start.

Chocolate, clocks and neutrality

France had been truly lovely.

I really had not expected to have such an enjoyable and relaxing time there.  Places that receive hype normally disappoint, but in this situation I had been lucky enough to get what seemed to be the best of both the hype and the hidden.

Sadly, nothing lasts forever and I was soon on the road again.  First by train through to Stuttgart (which turned out to be a horrifically boring city), then on a plane through to Switzerland.

It was a strange twist of fate that I found myself in Zurich at this time.  Over the course of the last year, I had become acquainted with numerous Swiss people  from Zurich through my masters.  It had been a great experience knowing them as they had provided me a far better insight into a country that I frankly knew little of beyond the stereotypes of chocolate, clocks and neutrality.  As is always the case in such situations, I now unsurprisingly found myself in Zurich with none of my Swiss friends within 5,000km of me.  It seemed to be some kind of infernal joke that my time here would be only guided by the proxy of my friends.

This minor glitch was not going to stop me from enjoying myself or exploring the city though.

What I found was similar to Oslo.  Though even more organised.  It was the German/Scandinavian style of precision and cleanliness that made life appear to run as clockwork.  Much like Oslo, this was another expensive city and within a day of walking it was clear that I had seen the majority of the sights that were on offer.  The buildings in the old city were a beautiful reflection of the past (though they had all been clearly updated with the benefits of restoration).

This was a city where the trams came on time as did the trains.

At one point, I even found myself laughing to myself when I looked at my watch and noted that in 30 seconds the train I was waiting for would be late, only to look up again and see that the train was arriving on time to the minute.

I did my usual thing of climbing the tall things to try and get a better view and I even found myself on a boat in the middle of Lake Zurich.  It was calm and peaceful.  My trip around the world was coming to an end and it was fitting that I was able to move it to conclusion with some quiet.

As I walked through the old city, I wandered past what looked to me to be the classiest cafe I had ever laid eyes on.

I had to enter of course.

I strode through the floors of the cafe and into the back room with the elegant couches and ordered myself some Darjeeling tea and strudel.  Both were of the finest quality.  As I lingered over the tea, I had thoughts of how nice it would be to spend my days drifting away surrounded by the finery.  This was a short lived thought once the bill arrived.  A pot of tea and a strudel had set me back the princely sum of Swiss ₣18.  It was clearly time to leave.  

The more I wandered around Zurich, the more I realised that this was not the type of place suited to a tourist like myself.  There simply was not enough to do.

This was the type of place to be lived in.  It was the type of place that I should have brought myself to on the way to skiing, or for the purposes of visiting people.  To merely be one of the sight seeing throng, this place was not entirely suited to the task.

The evening was approaching, so I went to find myself a feed.

I contemplated getting some fondue, but quickly realised how horribly pathetic it would be to order a communal dish such as fondue to eat by myself.  I settled for the rosti and the Zurich style veal instead.  The buttery warmth of the sauce more than made up for the lack of a melted cheese.

Wandering around Zurich had tired me out completely.

It was a relief when I arrived back at the hotel.  The Mondrian inspired motiff of the rooms made me laugh a bit, but it was still a clear winner compared to the bland and uninspired hotel rooms I had often found myself in for work.

Switzerland had been a nice relaxed location to visit, but I won't be returning until I can ensure I am met by my friends with local knowledge.