>Well, as an update to my last entry, I guess you should know what happened directly after I made the pre-flight blog. What happened? Was it exciting? Did I miss the plane?

As a matter of fact I nearly did! You see, I was sitting there happily blogging n the Silver Kris Lounge at Singapore Airport and was keeping a close eye on the time till I would have to head off to my boarding gate. I finalised my post, shut down my pc (how bloody long does Windows 2000 take to shut down?) and headed out to make my way to gate F56. On the way out, I cast a seasoned traveller’s eye over the departure board that they generously provide in the lounge and much to my chagrin, the flight was announced as LAST CALL! Oh my God, I’d only been at the airport for SIX HOURS but I still needed to run across Changi Airport to get to my flight. What a bloody tosser!

Anyway, as always happens, the people on the moving walkway thought that they were at an amusement park and decided to block the path of the seasoned travellers. SInce I was lacking ms. mac’s Velo bell to announce my upcomingness, I used the male equivalent – a burly ” EXCUSE ME!” and like the Red Sea, the dawdlers parted before me.

I was still a bit freaked out as I rushed to the gate only to find that I needed to take off my jacket, unpack my laptop and blah blah blah to get through the X-ray inspection. Imagine my disappointment to get through all this and then find out that the boarding gate is full and the plane had not even begun boarding.

To finish off, I went straight to the doors clearly marked First / Raffles Class and immediately made my way to the forward door of the 747-400 where the gorgeous Singapore Airlines trolley dollies greeted me by name (how did they know?) and handed me a hot towel and a glass of champers – fabulous sweetie. As always, a total triumph.

>Just a quick one from the Silver Kris lounge at Singapore. I am winging my way Zurich with SQ346 and am absolutely laden with gifts for the delectable ms. mac. According to her Blog, her hair and boobs are looking fabulous today. I hope that tomorrow brings similarly outstanding results. Although her hair will be a bit messy when I get through with her – oo er missus.

I have decided to christen this the pink trip because everything I have got for ms. mac is pink. The list is semi-secret, so I’ll not let the cat of the bag yet. Suffice to say that there is a pink iPod, pink perfume, pink sandals and tongs. They aren’t pink but they are essential to our culinary survival in Switzerland.

The tongs in question are the kind you get in Oz made of aluminium, with a spring and a pin holding them together at the end. You absolutley cannot get them in Switzerland. I shit you not! Anyway, I bought the entire supply in Safeway Elsternwick when I was in Oz. Along with about four kilos of Oxo brand stock cubes, the safety and sanctity of the chateau mac kitchen is assured.

Anyway, I’m off before they close the flight and don’t let me board. Not travelling on the top deck of the 747 tonight, I wanted a window and they were all taken upstairs. I’m slumming it in Raffles calss on the main deck. It’s not as good believe me!

Bye for now. Next blog from Chateau mac (if I’ve got the energy wink wink).

—End transmission—

>Unbelievably to everyone who knows him, this guy is 8 years old today.

He is a bit of a goose and a lot of a cutie. Here we see him cranking out the air guitar – he’s a guitar legend this boy!

Have a great day matey, I love you and miss you heaps. See ya on Friday.

Dad
xxx

>I need to get on the ms. mac exercise regime and STAT!!! Of course, I will be getting on the “exercise regime” the minute I get through the door, but I mean the actual ‘don’t weigh so much at the end of it’ regime. This will revolve around things like this too.

Malaysia has been (as previously reported) an absolute bust on my diet. I have done nothing but eat since I got here. That would be fine if I was whippet thin and had abs like WS!, but unfortunately, I have an ab. It’s a washboard – for woollens. Now this is not an impediment to being H-O-T in some circles, but I have made good progress lately, thanks largely to the tutelage and efforts of ms. mac. It seems a shame to waste the work, so I’m on the Huffy Puffy program (both in the good way and the bad way) when I get home.

Having said that, I absolutely must share what I had for dinner last night with you both. We were searching for something authentically Asian and we found it!

We went to a footpath restaurant which had all these tables with gas bottles and burners on them. Looks interesting, what’s that big steaming pot on the table there. It was something called a Steamboat.

A spicy broth called Tom Yam – chilli, fish stock, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves – awesome! Accompanying this you receive a huge plate of rice vermicelli noodles and a correspondingly huge plate of seafood – prawns, squid, cuttlefish, octopus, dumplings, fishballs, tofu pieces (fried and raw), quail eggs and assorted greens.

Basically, you wait till the Tom Yam is boiling, then stir in the noodles and the fish stuff. Let it cook and serve yourself a bowl with your individual ladle. I tell you, the flavour is incredible. It is very hot though, so if you are a bit of a nancy, you can have it with chicken soup too.

I need to lie down, I am exhausted from the sheer effort of swallowing all the yumminess that Malaysia has to offer. I wonder what tomorrow will bring? Stay tuned!

—End transmission—

>Selamat Datang…Welcome to the Malaysian update from your intrepid traveller.

I have been busy this week sweating my arse off in the Malaysian climate here in Melaka. This is a great place! Despite having to spend every day working, my colleagues and I have had the opportunity to experience a lot of what Malaysia has to offer.

The biggest thing about Malaysia is the mix of cultures. There are three main ethnic groups here:

1. Native Malays – also known as Bumiputera and the majority of the population. They are all(?) Muslims and occupy many positions of power in the country.
2. Chinese – these people are the largest minority and are typically hard-working and very clever. Why do you think that there are so many Chinese Malaysian doctors in Australia? They form the majority of overseas students that travel to universities in Australia, UK, US etc.
3. Indians – they were brought to Malaysia during the time of the British rule to be employed as estate workers. You would be forgiven for thinking that you were in India when you are talking with them. They have maintained a strong ethnic identity whilst integrating into the Malaysian society.

So whats with the anthropology? Well I’m glad you asked. As you know, it’s all about the food at chateau mac. We are very enthusiastic about eating and enjoy sampling the delights of wherever we go. Here in Malaysia I have eaten a wide variety of delicious foods since I arrived.

When we first got here, we had some Chinese (with a Malaysian twist) which was very good. They use chilli in everything so if you’re a wuss – stay home! Then we went out and had Satay sticks and Kway Tieow. The satay sticks are self explanatory, but the Kway Tieow is a broad flat noodle dish which is fried in a wok and then served with an eggy sort of gravy. There is always a good mix of seafood in it such as prawns, squid and octopus. The place we went for the satay was like a huge shed and the man out the front cooking the sticks was slaving over this fire for hours, fanning it with a banana leaf fan – just across the road from apartment buildings – bizarre! There were about 8 of us for dinner that night and we were ordering the sticks in lots of 20 or so. They were small strips of beef and chicken and grilled to perfection.

The next night was a steaming bowl of fish ball noodle soup – and no WS! fish balls are not the delight YOU think they are! A clear broth with mee noodles (that’s probably a tautology) fish balls, crab claw and non-descript (but delicious) greens. Great

Thursday was Curry Laksa – ms. mac’s favourite! This a coconut and red curry flavoured soup with noodles, prawns, chicken, greens and fried tofu. Awesome!!! It is imposible to eat without wearing a large portion of the soup so don’t wear your best shirt for laksa.

Last night my Chinese Malaysian friend took us to a roadside Chinese food court. I’m going back so there will be pics – don’t worry. Dinner was Char Kway Tieow, Char Siew Pork, Crispy Skin Pork, Herbal soup with Pork Ribs, Curried Stingray and these crazy boiled barley drinks that were slightly strange but very cooling. Can you see the porky theme? I was moaning that there is no dead pig in a Muslim country and Ho said, yes there is – let’s go and get some. It was an easy stroll from thje hotel and well worth the trip. In all, dinner cost RM30 which is about CHF10 so you can eat well for next to nothing. I heart Malaysia!

See youse all later.

And a big Happy Birthday to my Mum who is celebrating her 23rd birthday for the 36th time today. Happy Birthday Mum xxx

—End transmission—

>Hi Folks,

Just a quick blog from the Silver Kris Lounge at Sydney Airport. Last night, I went to see the latest (and lastest) installment in the Star Wars franchise. I have to say that after the disappointment of the previous two offerings, granted the Clone Wars one was ok, I was not only pleasantly surprised, I actually thought it rocked!

Maybe this is because I went to the cinema on my own after walking from my hotel down to the Macquarie Centre in North Ryde. Be that as it may, the content of the film is something you’ll see for yourself, so I’m sayin’ nowt! What I do want to tell you about is the experience of going to the movies on your own as a saddo busines-type dude 12,000 miles from home.

Firstly, walking from a hotel complex in suburban Sydney to anywhere is a bit of an exercise in adventure tourism. This is not becasue of the marauding gangs of guys in their hotted up Commodores, but because of the logistics involved in navigating. When you’re in the car, if you go the wrong way, you just turn around and go the other way. The principle is the same on foot, but the effort involved is significantly more. To illustrate this point, I will explain about how I went down Herring Rd. towards the Macquarie Centre and found the place no trouble. The thing is, that the shopping centre / movie complex is frickin’ huge and the majority of the small village required to house this behemoth is taken up bythe carpark! All the lights were off at the front of the centre so I thought I would follow the neon sign around to the cinema complex – BIG MISTAKE!!! I ended up traipsing through about fourteen levels of the multi-storey carpark trying to find a way into the cinema bit. The only navigation points I had were those crappy signs that they put on the roof to “navigate” you while your looking for your carspace. They just don’t cut it on foot!

Anyway, after a couple of hours, I found the entrance to the cinema and made my way optimistically to the ticket queue. No problems on getting a seat for the 20:45 session, just make your way through to Cinema 6 please. I went around there about 20 mins before the session and since it was only day 3 of the film in Oz, the queue to get a seat went around the corner and up the stairs. That would be fine, I’m a cultured person quite able to wait my turn for something. Now this is something they just don’t do in Switzerland, but that’s not for here as Marjorie Dawes would say. What annoys me though is when a geek in front of me, yells out to a bunch of people he goes to uni with and invites them to join him in the line. One person I can handle – 6 people. “Oi, fuck off to the back of the line ya wankers!!!” Or at least that’s what I was thinking. What I said was – nothing. If ms. mac had of been there, we would have been getting ready to rumble. She has an endearing quality I like to call agressive politeness. Couple that with an uncanny knack of saying what she thinks, and you have a recipe for trouble. It’s never dull with her at the shops. I think she managed to get a written warning for a British Airways check-in chick once.

So I got into the cinema, found a good three seats on the end of a row that were not occupado and sat down. The bunch of teenage girls next to me were annoyingly loud but I figured they’ll be quiet once the movie starts. I wish that was my only trouble! During the “pre-game show” portion where they play the ads etc, an old, hugely fat wheezy man hauled his old, fat, wheezy carcass up the stairs and looked for a place to sit. I was praying he wouldn’t sit next to me but, you guessed it, to my horror, he literally fell into the seat next to me, huffing and puffing (and not in the good way) for the next 2 hours and 26 minutes. Fucking hell. I was leaning to the left trying to get some space and some air, and my arse was getting numb as hell, but I didn’t want any part of us to touch. Not because I’m worried about touching another man. That’s no problem – but this guy was old, fat and wheezy FFS! Anway, to cut a long story (and geez this turned out to be an epic) I made it through the movie – old, fat, wheezy guy snored, snorted and wheezed in my ear for 2 hours 26 minutes and then it was over. It kind of made it special though. For most viewers of Star Wars Episode Three – Revenge of the Sith, Darth Vader doesn’t turn up until the last 15 minutes, but I got to sit next to him for the whole fucking film – which was nice!

As I got up to leave, I found that I could have pulled up the arm of the chair next to me and used up the spare seat that was next to me thus alleviating the oldness, the fattnes and the wheeziness that I lived through for the whole 2 hours and 26 minutes. It just goes to show how often the inhabitants of chateau mac get to the cinema!

Anyway, off to Singers now (that’s Singapore, Kim) and then a couple of weeks in Malaysia. Don’t know about bloggability up there. Let’s play it by ear shall we?

Tschüss

—end transmission—

>Well, amidst the whirlwind celebrations of the Queen of Blogdoms birthday, I found myself physically separated by some 12,ooo miles from the seat of the excitement.

To console myself, I decided to live it up and take my Swiss colleagues on the cook’s tour of Sydney.

We went to Benelong Point, site of the Sydney Opera House and saw

The Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Then we turned on the spot and saw

The Opera House.

As if that wasn’t enough, we strolled through

Circular Quay and around to the Rocks.

Having seen the Sydney Harbour foreshore and bought enough souvenirs to sink a battleship, I suggested that we should have a coffee. What better place to have a coffee and a piece of caramel slice than

Bondi Beach.

Afterwards, my colleagues left for Sydney Airport to head back to Europe. I returned to the city, had lunch with Paula and John,

two of our closest friends. Then, I headed back to the hotel and had dinner with my parents and someone who I haven’t seen in about 4 years,

my brother Matt.

This is just one of the delights that we could serve ourselves from the Seafood Buffet dinner that my generous father treated us all to.

On the plate you can see lobster king prawns, oysters, smoked salmon, and of course, ms. mac’s fave; balmain bugs.

Hope you had a great birthday my love. I certainly seemed to make the best of not being with you to celebrate it *feels dead guilty*.

Miss you Stella. Love ya heaps xxxx

>Today is the auspicious occasion of this beautiful creature’s birthday.

Get over to her place and give it up. She deserves the birthday love.

Hapy birthday beautiful. I love you
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

>ms. mac has passed me the stick to do a meme about music and in my never ending quest to emulate her blog related excellence, I present the result to you both.

1. Total volume of music files on my computer? For ms. mac’s benefit, I will just go to the folder with my music in it and right-click it. Then the properties tab will tell me that I have 6.47 GB (6’956’015’987 bytes). The other 20GB are on the desktop PC with ms. mac.
2. The last CD I bought was? Robbie Williams Greatest Hits for ms. mac’s Christmas present.
3. Song playing right now? I am listening to the dulcet tones of Happy Birthday being sung to ms. mac by me over the magic of the internet. It apears that MSN Messenger has decided to make it so that I can hear everything that I say a second after I say it. I am the worst singer in the world, so music is in a bad way for me right now. Hopefully, I’ll make it better on the weekend with the impending purchase of some Apple products.
4. Five songs I listen to a lot or that mean a lot to me (in no particular order)
   
   • Black and White Town by The Doves. Geat band and this song just gets played over and over again. The song gives me shivers. For some reason I feel like I identify with this and I don’t see how, since I come from suburban Sydney. We had a swimming pool for fucks sake!
   • Time by Pink Floyd. When ms. mac and I first met, we were waiting for a taxi at 3am and someone in a flat near the taxi rank was playing this song. It was so loud, so clear and strong. This is an absolute fave. Hearing it reminds me of the beginning of the best and most constant thing in my life – my best friend and one true love.
   • Flame Trees by Cold Chisel. This is a song from the end of their career and is much more ballady than the classics. It just gets right in my head. Barnesey never sounded better than this. A renowned screamer, really singing his heart out.
   • Mr. Damage by The Angels. This band defined the aussie rock ‘n’ roll side of my youth. This song is about 2.5 minutes of pure energy. There isn’t a better song to drive as fast as your Kingswood will go. I love these guys and have the lot on vinyl. Would fork over any amount of dough for the CDs.
   • Temptation by New Order. This is my favourite song of all time and when I hear it, I just shut out everything else around me. This is the song that defines the import and British music culture side of my youth. At my school, if you liked this kind of music, the AC/DC crowd needed to know if you were some kind of poofter or something. The path that New Order leads me on could consume the rest of the blogosphere so let’s finish with these guys. And they’re still going. It’s never gonna be just five songs or five movies or five books or five…
5. I am going to pass the stick to gomad. He is a music buff from hell. I’d pass it to ms. mac but she passed it to me. You can read hers here.

—End transmission—

>Dear Sir,

On the evening of the 18th of May I experienced what could only be described as a luggage related laundry emergency. 750 ml of St Anne’s Magenta red wine decided that it would prefer to be outside of the bottle rather than in (doubtless helped by the friendly and efficient baggage handlers of QANTAS). This resulted in the disaster you see below:

After two washes with the hotel laundry powder, I was about ready to throw three shirts and a pair of trousers in the bin. But help came from an unlikely source. It turns out that a foxy little Hausfrau from Switzerland had a solution. She advised me to procure some Napisan. This little gem usually cleans anything, but I decided to go for one of the new Oxy action products. Your offering to the market:

saved the day. I followed the directions (albeit roughly – there’s half a tub of your product in the bath at my hotel. The resulting science experiment had me gagging:

but the results, as can be plainly seen, are nothing short of amazing.

In conclusion, I love you Mr. Clorox, you’ve saved me from an unpleasant trip to the Macquarie Centre on Saturday to buy new shirts for my trip to Malaysia.

mr. mac Help for travelling businessmen rating: 1000/10