Sitting and basking in the sun outside the Notre Dame Cathedral and having a girl come up to me and speak to me in her sing-song French. I smiled and nodded enthusiastically as she spoke, letting her serenade me for a good 2 minutes before interrupting and informing her that I could not understand a word of French.
In her broken English she said "Oh, ok...sorry...I just wanted to know where you got your boots from. They are beautiful". I replied in my own sing-song bogan, "Oh thank you, I got them from from this high-end shoe store in Australia called Target".
My $25 Target boots gets the
French tick of approval
This Ferrari being pulled over by two French police officers on bicycles, in front of our packed tour bus. I think the proper french term for this situation is 'Oh fuck'.
Note: This post was written on my sister's iphone five days ago - I had to do some minor editing before it was published.
Hello!
Well, we have finally arrived at KL and boy, are we exhausted! Being a tight ass is definitely not for the fainthearted.
We left the airprort, dragging 3 suitcases and managed to make the bus to head to the train station.
After a 15 minute train ride we arrived at central KL and caught a taxi to the Shangri-La hotel.
Wow! Can I just say the hotel itself is pure opulence, and the hotel staff - well, don't get me started on these people! They are so nice and attentive! When we arrived they informed us that we would be upgraded to a Horizon Club room (I would have said the previous statement even if we wern't upgraded. I swear). People, this room is awesome. Here are some pictures. The building second from the left is the one of the Petronas towers. What a view!
For $140.00 per night, it is definitely worth it. Now if you will excuse me, I'm going to make myself a coffee on the whizbang Nespresso machine in our room.
So remember that busker from this post? You know, I wrote about how much I loved this guy's, ahem, "energy" (yeah whatever, it's true).
Well, turns out homeboy is a fully fledged muso with his own album! Like, with actual proper songs! And since hello zogi is known to teeter (yes, teeter) on the edge of musical consciousness, I thought I'd introduce him to the world.
His name is Michael Bevan, the song is "Hold on" and I should warn you, it is haunting as f**k (oh yes, even the most purest forms of art can ultimately be reduced to its very basic 4-word vulgarity form. Three years of studying philosophy, RIGHT HERE, people.)
So, I might be about 5 years late on this guy, but even still, can somebody listen to this song and explain to me why he is still busking on the corner Ultimo Rd in Chinatown? Especially next to that hobo who pimps out his dog (fun fact: when the money bowl gets full, the entrepreneurial hobo comes darting around the corner, single-handedly swoops up the loot and then legs it back to his hiding spot, all under 30 seconds flat).
Just more evidence that the world is an unfair place.
I just had to take a break from my work to say this -
Wow! Massive respect to ABC's Four Corners and Animals Australia - I haven't seen thefootage - nor do I plan to - but thank you to the producers, reporters, camera crew and everyone who worked on this show.
If you have't already done so, I urge you to go to http://www.banliveexport.com/and pledge your support - this is a special joint collaboration by Australia's two peak animal protection bodies, RSPCA Australia and Animals Australia.
You can also donate at the RSPCA or at Animals Australia so they can continue to keep doing incredible work like this.
Of course, this practice is not just restricted to Australia. If you are reading this from outside Australia, you can also visit WSPAto donate or find out more.
It's easy to miss, especially if you're always looking on the ground.
I often try to imagine the person who wrote this - standing there on the open ledge, scrawling the message for the whole world to see. Most probably at night, with the black endless sky above him (or her!) and the stifled sounds of sirens and laughter coming from the city below.
Anyway, looking up and seeing it always makes me smile. Even if I'm at uni on a Saturday (as I was last week, when I took these photos).
I think it's safe to say that my travelling bud, Miss B*, and I were genuinely unsure as to how this holiday would turn out. I mean let's just say that we had absolutely no friggin' idea.
Fortunately for us, we got an inkling pretty early on in our trip. Yes, I can't be certain but I'm pretty sure it was somewhere between getting pulled aside at Sydney Airport for testing positive for gun residue (in Miss B's luggage - fortunately it proved false after 2 further tests) and the most HORRIBLE ferry ride to our accomodation (where, for a whole twenty minutes we had the privilege of inhaling the most spectacular body odour emitted by the tiniest and apparently most hardest working labourer of all of "Hammo" Island). And to make matters worse, it was pouring. So yes, you could say we got an inkling.
To start at the begininng, our flight was delayed for one hour and so we missed our connecting ferry to Airly Beach from Hamilton Island.
