My new chain of men's clothing stores

As I am away from home for a few months and will not be earning for that time, I had to find a different way of getting income.

I spotted a gap in the market in Australia for designer men's clothing and so I started my own chain of stores and stands in department stores.

They have been doing quite well so far, as you may be able to tell from my delighted grin in this photo, taken from my stand in Melbourne's flagship Myers department store:

Christmas Day 2006

Ever since I announced that I would be spending Christmas in Australia, people in the UK have been wondering what it would be like having Christmas day in the heat. Now I can confidently answer that question - I've got no idea, because Melbourne (hereafter to be referred to as 'Miserable Melbourne') was wet and pretty cold for most of the day.

Caillie had introduced me in the past to the idea of 'season lag', where the season does not tie in with one's expectation of the time of year, in particular where Christmas is concerned. By this I mean that Christmas has always been cold in our experience and it seems incongruous for it to be warm. I experienced this 'season lag' in the build up to the big day, in particular in the Cameron Highlands where I spotted an Indian woman wearing a santa hat behind the bar of the tea shop in the Bharat plantation. This 'season lag' did not prove to be a problem on the day itself though - it could easily have been an English autumn day.

This was my first Christmas away from home, and the first with a group of friends, so this made it interesting anyway. We decided to do some barbequing, by which I mean some outdoor cooking on the electric hotplate. We threw a number of shrimps onto the barbie, as well as some steaks and some kanga bangas (kangaroo sausages of course). And some normal sausages. And some chicken drumsticks. So we continued the normal Christmas tradition of eating too much.

The Eagle Vale shiraz was opened early on. Jules cracked open a four litre box of wine, which was more in the 'plum jam' bracket of wines. And there was beer, beer and more beer. Sadly it was Australian, but still beer. So that was another Christmas tradition successfully negotiated.

To be fair it didn't rain the whole day. There were breaks in the rain for some... hail! Plus there were also occasional glimpses of sunshine. During one of the long periods of rain interspersed with hail, a man set up a video camera a hundred yards away from us. We're convinced that if we'd watched local news that evening we would have seen the following story: "Today was the coldest and wettest Christmas day in Melbourne's history, breaking all the records, but there were still some people crazy enough to eat outside..." (pan across to the five of us cooking sausages).

We managed to find space in our busy outdoor electric hotplate-ing sessions to play some cricket in the park. Unfortunately Matt's sheer power broke the ball after two overs. Jules' hour-long search for a replacement proved fruitless, despite her offering a dog owner that she would buy the ball from his dog for ten dollars. So we played some cards and then made our way back to the hotplate.

The evening food session included some mulled wine and some mince pies, and there had also been some crackers, party hats, poor jokes and dancing, so all in all we did quite well on the Christmas traditions!

Business Man

I am on a three month sabbatical from work, and am currently not doing any paid work. It is slightly unclear then why I was in the business class of my flight from Perth to Melbourne. Fisher's are normally too stingy to stump up for anything other than economy, so this was a very welcome surprise for me.

I turned up at the airport, printed out my boarding card and stood in the economy queue for ten minutes before spotting the 'business' printed on the card. After enlisting the help of an attendant, it emerged that I was (somehow) indeed in business class, so I got into a far shorter queue to check in my bag.

I actually had some leg room, the food was quite nice (in case you're interested, I went for the veal medallions in mushroom sauce served with mashed potato and vegetables du jour, followed by the cheese and biscuits). All in all, a pleasant flight even though it was an hour and a half late - well, you can't have everything.

Pemberton and southern Western Australia

After Margaret River, we drove further south. We paid a short visit to Cape Leeuwin, which is the most south westerly point in Australia. That appears to mean it is not the most southerly point, nor is it the most westerly point, which is a pretty ropey claim to fame really. There was a lighthouse there, and it is the meeting point of the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean.

Next we went to the 62m tall Gloucester Tree, which has the tallest fire lookout tower on any tree in Australia. This meant that some brave soul had plonked a two ton tower at the top of the tree. The way to get to the top was to climb up some metal spikes spiralling round the tree which another brave soul (as the first one probably plunged to his death plonking a two ton tower at the top) had hammered into the trunk of the tree. Being a brave and manly soul myself, I made it as far as the tenth of the metal spikes before my knuckles went white and my hands had to be prised open, and I had to make my way shakily back to earth. Paul and Pie, however, were not willing to let the possibility of certain death get in the way of a good photo and clambered up to the tower.

We also did a treetop walk among the very impressive Karri trees in the 'Valley of the Giants'. My fear of heights meant that I could complete this walk, but only if I clung to both sides of the walkway with both hands.

Pemberton was our home for a couple of nights. It would be overgenerous to call it a 'one-horse town'. We eventually found the one pub in the town, and the food there was actually very good. We later found out that most towns in the area were a similar size, and all had to prove that they were better in some way than the surrounding towns. We passed through a town that was 'the best small town', which presumably meant that it was neither the best town nor the smallest town. Then there was the town with rather disturbing giant figurines made out of straw and metal standing along the highway. Then there was Northcliffe, with its large sign asking 'Where the Heck is Northcliffe?' But my personal favourite was Donnybrook, the 'home of the Granny Smith'. To emphasise this point, the streetlights had large fibreglass apples hanging from them.

Throw another egg on the outdoor cooker

We spent a few days in Margaret River, in the South Western part of Western Australia. Similarly to the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia, it is a cooler area where all kinds of crops grow. Much as I enjoyed the tea from the Highlands, Margaret River’s produce got me even more excited - wine!

We visited a few wineries during our stay, and of course we tested the wines to make sure they reached our strict quality standards. The best one we went to, in my opinion, was the first one we went to - Eagle Vale. The winemaker there was a French man who had some very forthright opinions, but generally they seemed to be valid. We found out later that he is not very popular among the locals, but he was charming to us. His wine was good and he appeared to take a lot of care over it.

There are also a few breweries in the area. Unfortunately, I woke up one morning feeling a bit under the weather (not alcohol related I hasten to add), so I volunteered to be ‘Des’ that day (although they call it ‘the skipper’ over here). That means I missed out on the brewery’s sample set. While Pie and Paul were enjoying their beers, I was ‘enjoying’ a lemon, lime and angostura bitters.

Another highlight of Margaret River is the Jewel Cave. There are actually three caves around the area, but all the guidebooks say that the Jewel Cave is the biggest and most spectacular. We certainly weren’t disappointed by the impressive stalactite and stalagmite formations.

Now you may be wondering about the title to this blog entry. Everywhere in Australia has outdoor ‘barbeques’. We saw some in South Perth, and now our accommodation in Margaret River had one. However, to my mind, barbequing involves cooking on charcoals that you’ve spent ages trying to heat up, and then when you actually cook on them, they are far too hot and all the meat gets burnt. The outdoor barbeques are just gas or electric hotplates and grills. So I don’t think that counts as a barbeque. We had a few eggs left over from an earlier meal, so we simply cooked them on our hotplate. I somehow don’t think that would be possible on a charcoal barbeque.

A most bizarre thing

If someone said to you that in a country half way around the world from your country, someone had made scale replicas of some of the buildings in the town you had been to school for seven years, would you believe it?

We hired a car for a few days away from Perth in the South Western part of Western Australia. An hour’s drive south of Perth we found the miniature Abingdon village, an attractive garden which contained scale replicas of four buildings from Abingdon, the town where I had been to school for seven years. It is not immediately clear why the landscapers had chosen Abingdon as their template, but chosen it they had, so the three of us had to take a look.

We actually spent far longer there than we had anticipated. Not only were the gardens the perfect place for a picnic, but they also had a mini golf course which we had to test out. (They also had a miniature golf course, but we couldn’t play on that one.)

Perth

We finally got an opportunity to look around Perth. Perth is a nice city. Much like Singapore, it is a pleasant place to live, but there is not a lot for a tourist to do.

Michelle drove us to South Perth from where there is a beautiful view of the Perth skyline. We wandered along the south bank of the Swan River in sweltering temperatures (about 36 degrees Celsius), stopping only to investigate one group’s barbeque as they sat in the park.

Then we looked around the city itself. Even the week before Christmas in the centre of a major city, the shopping centre was not that busy. This is because most of the inhabitants live in suburbs around the city, all of which have their own parade of shops. There is no reason for the locals to come into the centre.

We had a quick look at the Perth Bell Tower, then the heat got too much, so it was back to Michelle’s for our first barbie of the trip!

Rotto

We took a ferry trip across from Perth to Rottnest Island (known as ‘Rotto’ to the locals). Rotto has a lot of beautiful sandy beaches and clear blue sea. It is called Rottnest, which means ‘rat’s nest’ on account of the very strange animals called quokkas which live there. They are like oversized bouncing rats. When we saw the first one, we were very excited and had to take some long range photos with the zoom. Then we saw one that we could get fairly close to, and took some photos of that one. When we sat down for our picnic lunch, another one came right up to us - clearly not afraid of humans - begging us for food. And when we left the island, one was standing upright, half-cut, on the ferry boardwalk. So they are fairly numerous and very tame.

I managed to get awarded the first, and so far only, ‘muppet of the tour’ award. Just after I’d been trying my best to snorkel in the clear blue sea, I got out, got changed and was searching through my bag for my sunglasses. After about five minutes’ searching, Paul and Pie asked me what I was looking for. “Have you got two pairs of sunglasses?” Pie asked. “No, just the one,” I replied. “You’re wearing them,” came the retort. Oops.

After we’d exhausted ourselves with the sun, sea and sand, we caught the ferry back to Fremantle (‘Freo’ to the locals, who appear to like their abbreviations). Freo is an attractive small town just south of Perth, which underwent a renovation when the Aussies won the America’s Cup for sailing a few years ago. The fish and chips there come highly recommended, and the chilli mussels were good too.

A Great Day!

We made our way to Perth on the next leg of our journey.

We spent a fantastic day at the WACA, watching the first day of the third Ashes Test. England played really well and bowled the Aussies out for 244. Unfortunately we then lost a couple of quick wickets (although Belly's should apparently have been a no ball). Monty took five wickets and was the hero of the day.

Off the pitch, things were highly enjoyable as well. We were in the Aussie Fanatics stand, as were quite a few other England supporters, so there was a lot of good banter going on. The Aussie fans were trying so hard to emulate the ‘Barmy Army’, and they nearly got there, poor mites.

I even avoided major sunburn, with some good use of the ‘slip, slap, slop’ formula used by the Aussies. I only got some sunburn on the top of my right foot, rather bizarrely. Paul and Caillie will no doubt relate the tale of how I've been sunburnt there before...

I will pretend that I wrote this entry at the time it happened, and that I don’t know about the horrors that happened at the WACA over the next few days of the Test, and that Duncan Fletcher has single-handedly ruined my holiday with some bewildering team selections.

Back to Singapore

We had another couple of days in Singapore and did the more touristy sightseeing things as Pie had arrived to join us.

This meant the Long Bar in the Raffles Hotel, drinking Singapore Slings and throwing monkey nut shells on the floor.

We went to a bar at the top of the Swissotel building to get some good views of the skyline of Singapore at night (and drink some Tiger of course!).

And then there was Sentosa island. Singapore does everything in an organised and efficient manner, and that includes cheesy and tacky touristy resorts. There was even a tourist academy, presumably to teach the Singaporeans the best and most efficient way to take tourists’ money.

And finally we saw Boat and Clark Quay, very touristy areas, which were the only places in Singapore we were pestered and hassled during our stay. I finished off my evening drinking a sample set of beers from a microbrewery on the Clark Quay.

Driving all over the world

A short spell of driving in Malaysia has given me another country to add to the list of countries I’ve driven in. I’ve now driven in the UK (England and Northern Ireland), South Africa, USA and Malaysia. Still a long way to go, but I should add Australia, New Zealand and Canada in this trip…

More tea Vicar?

We spent a couple of days in the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia, about a three and a half hour drive north from KL. It has to be said that Malaysian drivers are not the best I have ever seen. They don’t normally bother with indicating. The road up to the Cameron Highlands is a long, winding, mountain road. The main rule for overtaking on one of these roads is to wait until you are on a steep, blind bend and then…go for it!

After Paul had avoided the occasional maniac on his side of the road, we made it to our plush hotel in the Highlands. The Highlands are an attractive area in the hills in Malaysia, which are a lot cooler than the bustling city of KL. This makes them a popular weekend break destination. Due to the climate, a lot of crops are grown there, including strawberries. My personal favourite crop though was tea!

We went to two tea plantations during our time in the Highlands. Firstly we went to the very touristy one on the main road, which was packed with bus tours. The following day we went to the Boh plantation, which was along a road so windy that the buses couldn’t make it. This meant that the plantation was a lot quieter and a lot more bearable. We were able to get proper cuppas, and wander through the patches of tea bushes.

On the night we were there, we decided to go for an ‘English’. We went to ‘Ye Olde Smokehouse Inn’, which did a very good approximation of an English gastropub. The roast beef was most delicious, although the Yorkshire Pudding was a little disturbing. I did feel the apple crumble was a bit too crumbly and not apple-y enough for my liking.

There are a lot of nice walks to be had in the Highlands. We did a nice short walk on the Saturday, to a little waterfall near the hotel. On the Sunday, Paul and I tried a longer walk which was marked on the map. However, it wasn’t marked in real life. After a few wrong turnings and arguments with men with menacing looking wild dogs, we decided to give up and walk down the hill along the main road. This was marginally more dangerous than the wild dogs, but we did make it down without having to dive over the crash barriers.

Haute Voltige

A number of years ago I went to visit a friend, Strong John, in Grenoble. We had a typically French weekend there, playing darts, drinking in an Irish pub and then going for a curry. Our one concession to French-ness was watching a film in French. Obviously it was a Hollywood film in French, but a film in French nonetheless. The film was called ‘Haute Voltige’, but the English speaking audience may know it better as ‘Entrapment’, starring Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta Jones. The only good part of the film is the two main stars doing stunts hanging off the Skybridge of the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur.

The Towers were the first thing we made our way to as we started our day in KL. They are hugely impressive structures as you look up at them from the ground. There are trips up to the Skybridge but you need to get tickets in advance for a set time later in the day (they are free). Imagine my disappointment as we got there to find that all the tickets had gone for the whole day and that I wouldn’t be able to run along the bridge doing a poor Scottish accent.

KL is like a dirtier, less organised , even cheaper version of Singapore. It feels more like a normal city than Singapore does. There are a few more sights to see, but generally the Malaysians like to eat and go shopping as the Singaporeans do.

We spent a few hours looking at the sights, eating foods and wandering through the markets. Paul Evans set up his camera in an attractive position on the bank of the river to take a photo of the four of us. A woman wandered past carrying a baby and requested a photo of the two of them. Paul took a couple of photos and then asked if she had an e-mail address to forward the pictures to. She shook her head and walked away. A very strange incident.

We then headed back towards the Petronas Towers to get a drink. As we were in the area, Caillie popped downstairs to see if they had any space for the Skybridge trips. We were in luck! Having spent all day being grumpy, I suddenly cheered up for a few minutes. But fortunately didn’t try doing a Sean accent!

Pulau Ubin

Pulau Ubin was the first of Singapore’s islands to be named after a variety of rice back in 1923. Basmati Ubin and Egg Fried Ubin soon followed.

Pulau Ubin gives a taste of what Singapore used to be like before becoming ‘developed’ and ‘Westernised’. The inhabitants of the island live in small huts called Kampongs. There are no supermarkets and very few motor vehicles are allowed on the island. Caillie and I rented some bicycles for the day for about £2, which seemed reasonable. We needed to save money after the trip from the main island on a bumboat, which had set us back about… err… 70p.

The cycle routes are mainly tarmacked roads, but there are a few dirt tracks. Towards the end of our two and a half hours of almost solid cycling, we managed to find a dirt track which was nearly flooded. It is monsoon season in Singapore. This means that most afternoons there is a fairly heavy downpour. I think calling it a ‘monsoon’ is a bit over the top though. On this particular day, the ‘monsoon’ had occurred in the morning, when we were cycling, and now we were forced to cycle through the mud and water. The man at the bicycle hire shop summed it up with his comment, “Ooh, bit dirty”.
We rushed back to the main island with its civilised developed Western ways and then on to Kuala Lumpur.

Good advice

My piece of good advice for travellers is that the open-top bus tours of cities are a great way to see the sights. They are very informative, not too expensive, and allow you sit down (which is quite important in hot countries). I took one of these tours in Lisbon earlier this year which was amazing. The tour of Edinburgh also comes highly recommended.

The bus tours of Singapore are no different - they are well organised and informative. However, the main problem with Singapore is that there is very little for sightseers to see. I now know where there are a few more shopping centres of which I was not previously aware. I have also learnt how Singapore’s insecurity over being a small country leads it to build large things. However, none of its buildings can exceed 280m high, otherwise it blocks the airspace. Singapore is currently planning the world’s largest ferris wheel. It will be sponsored by Singapore Air and will be called the Singapore Flyer. That sounds a bit familiar to me - just think of the London Eye. The Singapore Flyer should be ready in 2010. Unfortunately for Singapore, China is also planning to build the world’s largest ferris wheel, which will be bigger than Singapore’s will ever be. This will be finished in 2008, in time for the Beijing Olympics. Singapore’s big wheel will never be the biggest - that’s a bit of poor planning.


Here's the Raffles Hotel - the main tourist attraction in Singapore:

Singapore - first thoughts

Singapore has been described as ‘as mad as cheese’, but I’m not sure that’s the case. Especially as I’m not quite sure how mad cheese is.

Singapore is dirty, smelly, disorganised and unsafe. No, not really. All the stereotypes I’d heard about Singapore are true. I tested this out by chewing some gum and dropping some litter. I am writing this from Changi Prison. The country is very clean - so much so that the maintenance man in the block I am staying in sweeps the ground outside every morning at 7am.

It does feel safe. Nobody tries to pester you or rip you off in the street. Taxi drivers are so well regulated that you know you’re not being taken advantage of. And it is organised too, especially the very efficient public transport system.

Singapore is the perfect place for people who like to shop. Sadly, I’m not one of those people. There is a whole street of shopping malls on Orchard Road. Then just round the corner, there are a few more shopping centres. Every small community has its own series of malls, in case the ones in the centre weren’t enough.

Then there’s the food. I have been told that the language of Singapore is the universal language of food. Singaporeans like to eat! The first place Paul and I went to eat for lunch cost about £1 for a huge plate of noodles. That would explain why Singaporeans tend to eat out most of the time - it is just as cheap as eating something they’ve cooked themselves at home. I’ve been eating a lot of seafood, which is strange because I don’t really like seafood. I’ve even learnt how to use chopsticks. That is an important life skill which will stand me in good stead in the future.

I’ve spent a great few days at Paul and Caillie’s place (despite the early morning sweeper!). It’s been fantastic to catch up with them again after so long.

As well as visiting some of the malls, we went to look round the Botanic Gardens. The highlight was the evolution garden, where they tried to show how plants have evolved over the years. There were some examples of proto-trees, cunningly crafted from metal, and there was a steaming pit of lava surrounded by snow-tipped mountains.

It has been a good few days, but Singapore is made for shopping and eating. I enjoy one of those activities (I‘ll leave you to decide which one), so it has been fine for me!