A Different Drummer

"He saw that all the struggles of life were incessant, laborious, painful, that nothing was done quickly, without labor, that it had to undergo a thousand fondlings, revisings, moldings, addings, removings, graftings, tearings, correctings, smoothings, rebuildings, reconsiderings, nailings, tackings, chippings, hammerings, hoistings, connectings — all the poor fumbling uncertain incompletions of human endeavor. They went on forever and were forever incomplete, far from perfect, refined, or smooth, full of terrible memories of failure and fears of failure, yet, in the way of things, somehow noble, complete, and shining in the end. This he could sense even from the old house they lived in, with its solidly built walls and floors that held together like rock: some man, possibly an angry pessimistic man, had built the house long ago, but the house stood, and his anger and pessimism and irritable labourious sweats were forgotten; the house stood, and other men lived in it and were sheltered well in it."

- Jack Kerouac, The Town and the City

Expect more of these, from me and the Megan, from now until Feb 14...

Written eight years ago at the beginning of the Second Intifada (that one turned out nicely hey folks?), this piece by Edward Said remains pretty spot on today:

"When the PLO opted after the Gulf War to follow the example of Egypt and Jordan, and work as closely as possible with the American government, it made its decision (as had the two Arab states before it) on the basis of vast ignorance and quite extraordinarily mistaken assumptions. The essence of its calculation was expressed to me, shortly after 1967, by a senior Egyptian diplomat: we must surrender, and promise not to struggle any further—we will accept Israel and the determining role of the United States in our future. There is no doubt that continuing to fight as the Arabs had historically done would indeed have led to further defeat and disaster. But neither then nor today was it the case that the only alternative was to throw ourselves onto the mercy of America—saying, in effect, we will no longer resist you, let us join you, but please treat us well. The pathetic hope was that if Arabs cried long enough, ‘We are not your enemies’, they would be welcomed as friends. They forgot the disparity of power that remained. From the viewpoint of the powerful, what difference does it make to your own strategy if an enfeebled adversary gives up and declares, ‘I have nothing further to fight for, take me as your ally, just try to understand me a bit better and perhaps you will then be fairer?’

....To submit supinely to American designs in the Middle East, as Arabs have done for almost a generation now, will bring neither peace and justice at home, nor equality abroad. Since the mid 1980s I have tried to impress on the PLO leadership, and every Palestinian or Arab I have met, that the quest for a protector in the White House is a complete chimera, since all recent presidents have been devoted to Zionist aims, and that the only way to change US policy is through a mass campaign on behalf of Palestinian human rights, out-flanking the Zionist establishment and going straight to the American people. Uninformed and yet open to appeals for justice as they are, Americans are capable of reacting as they did to the ANC campaign against apartheid, which finally changed the balance of forces inside South Africa...

But it was soon clear that the PLO would never adopt this course anyway. There were several reasons for that. A strategy of this kind requires sustained and dedicated political work. It has to be based on democratic grass-roots organization. It can only spring from a movement, not a personal initiative by this or that leader. Last but not least, it demands genuine knowledge of US society, rather than superficial pieties or clichés. The reality is that there exists, inside America, a vast body of opinion which is often bewildered by the lurid rhetoric of Zionism and which would be capable of turning against it, were a mass campaign mobilized in the US itself for Palestinian human, civil and political rights. The tragedy is that the Arabs here have been too weak, too divided, too unorganized and ignorant to mount such a movement. But unless American Zionism is taken on in its homelands, all attempts to parley with the United States or Israel will lead to the same dismal and discrediting outcome."

"The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact. Non-Westerners never do."

He's dead, but it seems pretty likely civilisations will continue clashing in his absence.

This is Salmontron. After living a good life in the icy waters of Norway, this five kilogram beast swam all the way to the warm waters of Abu Dhabi, before being caught just off the coast near Spinney's supermarket. I bought him just hours later, or so I like to believe.

Tonight Salmontron will be stuffed with apricots, figs, coriander and mint, and slow roasted. We will eat Salmontron with a green herb mayonnaise. Honor him, for he lived for all of us.

For the second time this year, three undersea fibre-optic cables that connect the Middle East to the outside world have been cut.

Sure, it is weird how these cables, hundreds of kilometres apart, can all be severed simultaneously. The conventional wisdom, which I am pushing to the masses as part of the day job, is that it was an undersea earthquake.

Some people are busting into conspiracy theories, others are showing serious YouTube withdrawal symptoms. I'm getting nostalgic.

You see, the last Great Middle Eastern Internet Blackout happened during my final days in Cairo. I was in a strange period of Zen-acceptance, saying goodbye to the city and people I love, filled with big questions and confused excitement about what life in the Gulf, and at The National, would be like.

The time of the Great Cairo Exodus was upon us, with a bunch of people all saying goodbye at the same time. We had a weekend of supreme loveliness at a nice little place outside Cairo, then came back into town and I left pretty much the next day.

But before the weekend, there was need for some kind of goodbye drinks. People who lack my semi-autistic ability to be totally unaware of the emotional needs of their friends would have organised this a couple of weeks in advance, complete with phone calls, text messages, gentle reminders, etc.

Not me. It got to late on a Tuesday afternoon when I realised we needed to do something the next night, my last free night in town. I went downstairs to the internet cafe (the internet in our house was out) to send out an email / facebook invite.

And the I found out that Egypt didn't have any internet.

There were sporadic connections, each lasting a few seconds, occassionally letting you through to a site before disconnecting. But it was hamster-powered internet, a series of small furry animals scurrying around little wheels powering the slowest most unreliable connections on earth.

In two frustrating hours I managed to get out an email and a facebook invite. But I was pretty sure nobody would get the mail. And I was pretty sure the whole going away would die a sorry, disorganised death, starved at the hands of its neglectful master.

What I understimated what the power of Cairo's vast informal energy to make things happen despite massive failures of infrastructure. This is a city that turns the lack of a garbage collection system into a giant informal economy, a place where law and order is managed not by the policemen and governors, but by a collection of doormen, family matriarchs and shopkeepers.

Was it going to let the lack of modern communications get in the way of a final night of goodbye's and frosty cold Stellas? Like fuck it wasn't.

Everybody in the known universe turned up. They didn't know why, they just appeared,in a steady stream, drawn to the Greek Club by a the force of thousands of years of victory over disorganisation. How did they find out about it? Who knows. Did we rock out? Hell yes.

There was fine beers shared between the best of buddies:


A fine game of pin the grope on the Megan:


An unexpected, extremely awesome surprise visitor:


And massive koala love



What more can you ask for? Then we left for a perfect weekend, one of history's great weekends, culminating in us jumping for joy in the gorgeous fading light of a perfect day:

I get the feeling 2009 could be the official Year of Being Let Down By People Who Call Themselves Progressive, with Rudd in Australia off to a good start and this kind of badness in the US:

"Barack Obama's path to the presidency included beating what had been one of the nation's most powerful families. But, in an unusual twist, his election last month is helping accelerate the trend toward dynasty politics.

His secretary of state will be Hillary Clinton, the wife of the former president. The Senate seat she’ll vacate is being pursued by Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of a president and the niece of two senators. Joe Biden’s Senate seat may go to his son Beau. Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar, Obama’s pick for interior secretary, could end up being replaced by his brother, Rep. John Salazar.

And Obama’s own seat could go to the son of the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. – less likely now in light of developments in the Rod Blagojevich scandal – or to the daughter of Illinois’ current House speaker." (Politico)

Get it together guys...

A long, intense interview in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz between the journalist Ari Shavit and Avraham Burg, the former speaker of the Knesset. The subject is Burg's book, which was tentatively titled Hitler Won but has been released as The Holocaust is Over, We Must Rise From Its Ashes:

The end may be optimistic, but throughout its entire course the book repeatedly equates Israel with Germany. Is that really justified? Is there sufficient basis for the Israel-Germany analogy?

"It is not an exact science, but I will describe to you some of the elements that go into the stew: a great sense of national insult; a feeling that the world has rejected us; unexplained losses in wars. And, as a result, the centrality of militarism in our identity. The place of reserve officers in society. The number of armed Israelis in the streets. Where is this swarm of armed people going? The expressions hurled publicly: 'Arabs out.'"

Do you really believe that the racist slogans which, appallingly, do indeed appear on the stone walks in Jerusalem are akin to the slogans of the 1930s in Germany?

"I see that we are not weeding out those utterances with all our might. And I hear voices coming out of Sderot .... We will destroy and kill and expel. And there is a transferist discourse in the government .... We have crossed so many red lines in the past few years. And then you ask yourself what the next red lines that we cross will be."

....

I will tell you frankly. I think we have serious moral and psychological problems. But I think that the comparison with Germany on the eve of the rise of Nazism to power is baseless. One example: There is a problem with the place of the army in our lives and with the place of the generals in our politics and in the relations between the political echelon and the army. But you are likening Israeli militarism to German militarism, and that is a false comparison. You describe Israel as a Prussian Sparta living by the sword, and that is not the Israel I see outside. Certainly not in 2007.

"I envy your ability to read the situation as you read it. I very much envy you. But I think we are a society that in its feelings lives by the sword .... It is not by chance that I make the comparison with Germany, because our feeling that we are obliged to live by the sword stems from Germany. What they deprived us of in the 12 years of Nazism necessitates a very large sword. Look at the fence. The separation fence is a fence against paranoia. And it was born in my milieu. In my school of thought. With my own Haim Ramon. What is the thinking here? That I will erect a big wall and the problem will be solved because I will not see them. You know, the Labor movement always saw the historical context and represented a culture of dialogue, but here we have terrible pettiness of soul. The fence physically demarcates the end of Europe. It says that this is where Europe ends. It says that you are the forward post of Europe and the fence separates you from the barbarians. Like the Roman Wall. Like the Wall of China. But that is so pathetic. And it is a bill of divorce from the vision of integration. There is something so xenophobic about it. So insane. And it comes just at a time when Europe itself, and the world with it, has made such an impressive advance in internalizing the lessons of the Holocaust and has fomented a great advance in the normative behavior of nations."

The truth is that you are a salient Europist. You live in Nataf but you are all Brussels. The prophet of Brussels.

"Completely. Completely. I see the European Union as a biblical utopia. I don't know how long it will hold together, but it is amazing. It is completely Jewish."

The whole interview is just riveting, if you are into this stuff. You can watch the author talk more about his new book in this great inteview on bloggingheads.

I'm fairly pessimistic on the current state of Israel, and its future. But one thing that sets it so clearly apart from its neighbours is the quality of its intellectual discourse - conversations like this, happening in major national newspapers, not cursing the evils of its enemies but instead looking deep within and asking unimaginably difficult questions. Along with being a vastly more open society than any of its neighbours, this is what makes the country the strongest in the region, not nuclear weapons or the backing of the US.

Environmental activists have staged protests in several Australian cities against a plan to combat climate change announced by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.....

In Adelaide, activists reportedly threw shoes at a puppet of Mr Rudd...
(BBC)

Shoe-throwing is totally the new black, and I love it. Well done, Adelaide.

Nobu is new to Dubai but not to the restaurant scene. It has been one of the trendiest and most influential restaurants in the world for more than a decade. AA Gill at The Times recently said its London brach was past its prime:

They’ve packed so many into this low, unprepossessing canteen of a room that they’ve made it a labyrinth. The waiters, apparently (or, rather, not apparently — invisibly), are constantly losing their bearings and finding themselves stuck up cul-de-sacs or unmarked tracks, hemmed in by the thick vegetation of Middle Eastern small-arms dealers, knickerless Ukrainian executive-stress consultants, record pluggers and fashion PRs putting each other on expenses and an overdressed smattering of speechless visiting provincials, who booked a seat at the most exclusive room in the nation six months ago and can’t quite believe that this is it. They are left in their own private Siberias to rue the truth that the abiding emotion for the socially aspirant is a deep sense of cheated disappointment.

The whole review is classic slamming of place that clearly got a bit too cosy and lazy in its ability to charge the suckers, and makes a great read...

Anyhow, Nobu's new branch in Dubai is the flagship restaurant of Atlantis, a giant symbol of Dubai's oversized excessiveness that sits at the tip of The Palm Jumeirah, an even larger symbol of Dubai's oversized excessiveness.

It is only a couple of weeks old, and I'm no A.A Gill, but I'm pretty sure that it has yet to go down the path of its London sibling. We had an absolute stormer of a meal there on Saturday night, which I have taken the pleasure of recreating in blog form for your pleasure (and perhaps my recollection, with a tear in my eye, when I am poor and hungry in some terrible nightmare future).

All these dishes, except the desserts, were served one at a time and shared between three. Cold, then hot, then sushi, then dessert, then wandering, stuffed and delighted, out the door for a long hard gaze into a stupidly large aquarium.

Cold

Yellowtail sashimi with jalepeno and citrus
The cleanest tasting, freshest piece of raw fish I have ever had. The jalepeno added a nice zing to the crystal-clear flavour of the yellowtail. If I was running the show, I would make the citrus sauce a little more citrussy. But I will never second guess The Nobu.

Sashimi Tacos
The most average dish of the night. Fairly plain, just pieces of raw fish in little mini taco shells. By mini, i mean the size of a box of matches. Came with a bland tomato salsa. Nothing memorable here.

Mixed seafood ceviche
Wonderful. A lovely stack of mixed fish and shellfish, all soaked in an intense citrus dressing. Took me to the citrus wonderland I was hoping to get to with the Yellowtail, and further. "It's lucky you're sharing it between three," said our American waiter, "because that can really burn out your palate if you had it to yourself." Sissy.

Hot

Duck breast with wasabi
Pretty excellent. Avoided the usual greasy fattyness you usually get with duck dishes, and had a nice degree of zing from the wasabi, which was grated whole on top of the duck, rather than turned into the typical green paste you see in sushi restaurants. Was interesting to taste wasabi in its pure form.

Black cod miso
One of the world's great fish dishes. It is what made Nobu famous, and understandably so. The waiter told us it might be the best piece of fish we will ever eat, and that is not an understatement.

The first mouthful of this is one of those flavours I will never forget, like big overripe peaches from the tree in our backyard when I was a little kid. Each of us literally moaned. I'm a big believer in simplicity when it comes to fish - make it awesomely fresh, barbeque it with a touch of seasoning, serve it up with a fat wedge of lemon. But when it comes to fancy "cooked" fish, this was indeed the best I have ever had.

Snow crab in tomato cream
Nice big chunks of sweet, juicy crab, but slightly drowned out by the creamyness of the sauce. On any other night this dish would have you in tears of joy, but with such illustrious neighbours, this one was about in the middle.


Sushi
Once you are done with the hot and cold dishes, they bring out the sushi menu, which seems to be aimed as a kind of "filler" for those still hungry after all the fairly small plates before. We ordered a mixed plate of whatever the chef reccomended, and requested a few pieces of Toro, the fatty tuna belly that we will probably only have the pleasure of eating for a few more years.

The sushi was great, basically perfect. But it is almost anticlimactic after the culinary acrobatics of all the more complex dishes. It was probably the best sushi I have ever had, but it was just upstaged by all that had come before.

The toro was good, not great. Again, it could just be time and place, but it only seemed marginally better than regular tuna. And in a pretty seriously expensive restaurant, it stood out for its extra, insanely expensive price: $15 per piece. You would get a fairly decent sushi meal at many good restaurants around the world for the price of two pieces of this stuff.

Dessert

Dessert Bento Box
Seriously chocolatey, seriously delicious pudding, served with a damn fine scoop of ice cream. This desert was good, but I'm marking it down for being sold as a dessert "bento box". Bento normally involves a box segmented into many small compartments filled with little tasty things, this was just pudding and a scoop of ice cream served in a box. Which doesn't detract from the amazing chocalateyness and perfect composition of one of the best chocolate desserts I have ever had.

Nobu Cheesecake
This is apparently Nobu's world famous cheese cake, the most delicious cheese cake in the world, made by a blind chef in London who has taken vows of chastity and silence to give a dignity and purity to his cheesecake making etc.

It was absolutely lovely,but the highlight for me was the scoop of unbelievably good passionfruit ice cream served along side it. Passionfruit is just a fruit of the Gods to me, and that incredibly lively flavour was just translated perfectly into an ice cream. One of the best ice creams I've ever had. (The competition? Turkish dondurma, El Abd in Cairo, Golden North honey ice cream from rural South Australia).

Mochis
Weird, weird, weird. Ice cream wrapped in a kind of glutinous, gummy wrapper. A really interesting texture, and tasty, but they were a little boring: it was three Mochi balls, each cut in half. All were different colour but tasted exactly the same, they got a bit repetitive by the end.

-----------

All in all, this was a seriously excellent meal, almost as good as any high-end restaurant meal I have ever had. We literally just walked in off the street and got a table, which by Nobu standards anywhere in the world is pretty crazy. Notice to UAE food lovers - Nobu claims over the phone to always be fully booked for weeks, but a number of people, including us, have just shown up and got a table. They made us wait for about 5 minutes while they checked if it was possible, then called one of us over and said that luckily there was cancellation.

I call bullshit, the place was never more than 75% full between 8pm and 11pm when we left. Just show up and get your Nobu on.

Money: Nobu is expensive, really expensive, there is no way of getting around it. Including a tip for the waiter, we spent about $170 each, and we did not buy wine. That's almost one third less than the bill that AA Gill described as "disgusting and embarassing" on his recent trip, but it is still plenty. But...

Two things:

1) Included in this price is about $30 each spent purely on water and a piece of toro. The water came at $10 per 800ml bottle, which is a pretty good scam if you can get in on it. And the toro was the second most expensive dish we ordered, even though it was just one individual piece of sushi each.

2) This is not really food, and shouldn't be priced as such. This is an event, a series of memories, inspiration and joy. The happiness I received from the meal would equal a good dinner, followed by a decent concert, followed by a boat ride on a river, chased down with a late-night move in an outdoor cinema. Just shut up and pay for it, or don't, whatever floats your boat.

I'll probably go to a place like Nobu about three times a year. I don't care how much it costs, just like I don't care about the cost of flying to Amsterdam and seeing Radiohead in the park. Counting little piles of golden beans and hording them away obsessively has never really been my strong point, and although it has to change, it doesn't have to change too much. Life is too short etc....

Next up, sometime in 2009, Reflets a Pierre Gagnaire. And El Bulli looms on the long-term horizon, as long as I can have my shit together enough to remember to enter the booking lottery next September.

I went on a trip last week that involved six flights in seven days. Aside from the loveliness of being in three of Europe's great cities, it also got me thinking about airports and air travel.

As we all know, a big part of the flying experience sucks - waiting, queuing, trudging around soulless places at four in the morning, being crammed like cattle into aethetically horrible spaces. If the end result - being in a place thousands of kilometres away in hours, not days or weeks - was not so awesome, we would never do it.

One thing that can really swing the experience from terrible to tolerable to terrific is the airport itself. So in that spirit, I present:

The Five Best and Worst Airports in the World
An incomplete, evolving list based on limited experience and strong feelings, written during a week of many hours spent in airports.

The Worst

Douala (Cameroon)

The zen of crappyness. Everything that could be wrong with an airport is perfectly, effortlessly wrong with this blight on the international aviation community.

Lets start with its lack of...electricity. I'm sure there is a power connection at some fundamental level, but that is not reflected in electric lighting, a public announcement system, refrigerators for drinks or any kind of electronic screen that displays flight information.

You know that big electronic arrival and departure board they have in airports? Here, it is a large notice board with flight information printed onto A4 sheets of paper and stuck up with thumbtacks. There is no computers or printers at check in - they look up your name on a clipboard, and hand-write your boarding pass and luggage tags. The windows aren't windows in the traditional sense of the word, but more like holes in walls - glass is a key ingredient in windows, as you may have noticed.

It didn't help my perception of this shithole when its charming security staff detained three of us for about 15 hours on arrival, hoping to get a bribe from the lovely Cameroonians who were there to pick us up. And it certainly didn't help our perceptions when they dragged what looked like a homeless man into the room they were holding us in, starting slapping him up, and then beating him on the soles of his feet with a stick.

Take a boat instead.

London Heathrow

I've never stood in longer lines, walked longer distances, dealt with more ridiculous "security" theatrics and paid more for worse internet access or crappier food than at Heathrow.

One time when I was there, they decided to implement a new policy: only one item of hand luggage per passenger. They counted hangbags, shoulder bags and laptop cases as an item, and refused to budge an inch or make any exception. Given that every single traveler in the universe carries one of these things, plus a carry-on bag, the result was an airport that stopped working, as every single person had to stop in the lines and try and stuff their smaller bags into bigger ones. There is no conceivable way this stupid policy made a lick of difference to security, but it just furthered the airport's image in my mind as a banana republic joke.

If you are changing flights in Heathrow, you need a solid two hours between landing and take off. Get there a good three hours before flying for regular flights. The stupid security, terrible queues and death march distances between terminals means even this might not be enough.

This isn't all Heathrow's fault - its location in London means it is incredibly hard to expand the airport, with environment and citizen groups opposing anything that might make the airport actually decent. How tough is it to improve Heathrow? They're been talking about a third runway for a decade, they expect it to be finished by 2030, when Dubai will likely have a spaceport and an underwater nuclear powered train that takes you to London in 2 hours.

"Brussels" Charleroi

Ahh Ryanair, you glorious bastards. Those 30 Euro flights to Brussels seem so cheap, until you land in Charleroi and realise that you are not in Brussels. You are in a nasty decaying industrial wasteland best known for its dungeon-master paedophiles.

There's a reason Ryanair is so cheap: it flies to cheap airports, some so cheap they actually pay for the privilige of receiving traffic. There is a reason Charlerois is cheap: it is a nasty, second rate piece of crap in the middle of nowhere, and certainly not in Brussels.

Cairo International, Terminal Two

Cairo has three terminals. One is old, refurbished and pleasant (the "old" airport). One is new and shiny and great, but you never land there (I think maybe it is only used for domestic flights to Sharm el Sheikh?). One is newer than the old one, but more run down and nasty (the "new" airport).

The New Airport - terminal 2 I think - is not very old, but it is seriously nasty. They chose not to buy properly made baggage trolleys, instead getting some random local metal workshop to weld wheels onto strips of scrap steel. Seriously, I am not exaggerating.

Nothing is sadder than a run-down airport. It is like a guy with no pants. Airports, like pants, are one of the few dignities we all expect, a minimum level of having your shit together, whose abscence signifies failure and decline. Given that Egypt is has been in glorious, super styling decline and failure for thousands of years, I guess this crappy airport is only appropriate. But seriously Cairo, put your pants on.

Mumbai

The only international airport I have ever been to where taxi drivers and tourist touts are allowed all the way into the heart of the airport, milling around by the baggage carousel and maximising the amount of time you spend getting hassled.

Everything that could be made uncomfortable in Mumbai airport has had its nastiness turned up to eleven - stinking, nightmare bathrooms, seats so uncomfortable that make you look longingly at the ground, a staff whose entire job description seems to be trying to score some bribe money without actually doing anything bribe-worthy.

They even managed to sell me a horrible cup of tea - it tasted like detergent mixed with dirty bathwater. In a country where incredibly delicious tea is available everywhere, all the time, for less than a cent per cup, this was a big achievement.

Top 5

Singapore Changi

The Grand Master, Governing Body and God-Emperor of airports. It hits every spot you can imagine - close to the city, a pleasant place to spend a few hours, sparkly and tricked out with high tech. It is huge, but seems small and easy to wander around, and like the city-state it serves, is packet to the brim with so many delicious places to eat great Asian food. Out the front is an endless line of luxury London-style black cabs, driven by honest men for a reasonable fee. Can an airport get better than this?

Amsterdam Schipol

You can land in Schipol and be on a fast train to Brussels, Paris, London and a bunch of other great Euro cities within an hour; for a couple of Euros the train will take you to central Amsterdam in 15 minutes. As well as being one of Europe's busiest airports, it is kind of like the central station of the great Dutch train system as well. Its just an ass-kicking piece of infrastructure that powers up everything within a few hundred kilometres of it.

Abu Dhabi

This is not a major world airport - it is not even a significant regional one. But for a small airport, Abu Dhabi runs the game. Most importantly, it is quick - you can literally be getting into a cab less than 20 minutes after the plane hits the runway, with baggage hitting the carousel absurdly fast. It is super well designed around a central hub that is just a couple of minutes walk from anywhere - check in, baggage reclamation, customs, departure gates, nothing is more than maybe 100 metres from the spacey pyschadelic centre that looks like a giant tiled mushroom in full bloom.

It gets the job done with simplicity and style, and the immigration people don't have the inclination to anally probe and strip search anyone with long hair or a sense of style like the lovely folk at Dubai seem to do....

Munich

It is like you have died and gone to efficient German heaven. There's no fucking around in Munich, everything just works - which is what you really want at 6am after a 4 hour flight. And be honest, after a nasty sleepless night on a crowded flight, you know what you want. You want a grilled sausage the size of your forearm served with a pretzel and some kinky mustard, washed down by litre of craftsman-like beer served in a glass you could bludgeon a man to death with.

Other airports will try to deny you this, telling you they know better. They'll tell you that what you really want is a Delifrance sandwich and a cappucino made in a Nescafe machine. But not Munich. It will not judge you. It will respect your wishes with clinical German excellence.

London City

London is full of shit airports. Heathrow is a like a voluntary, upmarket Guantanamo Bay, while Gatwick is in the middle of nowhere and monopolised by a ridiculously expensive train service. From this pile of manure grows a delicate flower, known as London City Airport.

My memory might be fooling me, but I remember it taking about 7 minutes by train to get from London City to the centre of town. It has to be the most centrally located airport in any major world city. There are downsides - its tiny size means proper jumbo jets cannot use it, so you need to fly on on a smaller plane. The one I took from Rotterdam used propellers. But it was great.

Anyhow, London City is like a little private airport shared exclusively between friends. Batman totally flies into London City. Nobody seems to know about it, and I like it that way. Consider yourselves let in on the secret.

I've been away from Australia long enough to forget about the Golden Gaytime, one of our great nation's finest ice creams on a stick. It just reemerged into my consciousness via that masterpiece of ambient awareness, the Facebook news feed. Thanks to Jess letting the world know she was having a Golden Gaytime for dessert, it is all coming flooding back to me.

Oh for the simplicity of a bygone age, when a brand like this didn't raise eyebrows:



The company that makes them seem to be pretty in on the joke now - when you buy a box of 4 at the supermarket, the packaging promises "Four delicious chances to have a gay time".

And another sign that I have been out of Australia too long - a Golden Gaytime costs 4 freaking dollars?

So much prettyness, so little time to spend lying on the ground laugh-weeping in awe and glee. Check out the whole album, but as a taste:


A Sphinx for our modern age: "Puppy" by Jeff Koons stands guard in front of the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao. As I was taking this picture, a super cute little local kid came up to me and said "He come to Bilbao, so we build him the kennel," and pointed at the building of the century sitting behind it.








As far as small, diverse bites of delicious things, washed down by wonderful wine, served in an unpretentious environment goes, Spanish tapas - pintxos in Basque country - are as good as it gets. Above, various delicious things, all tasty as can be. The highlight, which I didn't get a picture of, was a warm chorizo sausage, wrapped in thin flaky pastry, drizzled with rasberry sauce. Yes.


Barcelona's pigeons are rivalled only by the white royal doves of Bruge in Belgium as the world's finest rats with wings.


And they live in a fittingly regal home - Gaudi's Park Güell, overlooking Barcelona, is one hell of a park / lookout / work of surreal genius.


Santiago Calatrava's dreamy little footbridge is the second most awesome piece of architecture in Bilbao.


Although a pretty frigging distant second....

I'm smitten...

And this bad boy is sitting there waiting for you.

In typical fashion, I forgot to bring my camera cable with me, so this is just an iPhone pic to get the ball rolling. Expect more images of three of Europe's great cities in the next couple of days.

It has always felt self evident to me that the venn diagram of people who can read and write and people who use MySpace is basically a horizontal figure 8. MySpace is for children and idiots, Facebook is for all the rest. But it's good to see someone smarter than me - Rupert Murdoch's new biographer, in this case, saying the same thing:

"...if you’re on MySpace now, you’re a [expletive] cretin. And you’re not only a [expletive] cretin, but you’re poor. Nobody who has beyond an 8th grade level of education is on MySpace. It is for backwards people..."

Read the whole interview for more telling it like it is....