Australia 2013 - Part 1

Wednesday, Apr. 24, 2013 - 8:04 a.m.

This year's Australia trip found me there while the weather was still acting like summer.

Usually when I get there, I'm told that I have brought the milder Autumn season with me, but this year, that wasn't the case. Perth's heat reminded me very much of where I'd been raised. If any of you have ever been to Sacramento or any place in California's Central Valley for any length of time during high summer, that's what Perth feels like when it's warm there.

I keep trying to choose a connecting flight through Sydney that would allow me enough spare time to bounce into a cab and go over to the Opera House to take photographs and dither around in the parking lot, but alas, that didn't happen yet again this year. Our plane out of Los Angeles had a mechanical problem with the air conditioning that took about two hours to diagnose and repair, so there went the 'quick ass tour' window of time.

We finally did get airborne in the wee hours, though.

I had an aisle seat, which allowed me a little room to expand. And for my flght into Australia, my row-mates were very small and very polite women, each of whom had a bladder the size of a chickpea.

Yes, that's a pun.

I didn't get any sleep during the long-haul flight, but when we landed and disembarked, I still managed to blither through customs and catch my connecting flight from Sydney to Perth.

Note: Airline food tastes best when you're really really hungry. Seriously, it's not too terrible. After having been a heart patient now for more than a year, I've finally cut back on seasoning my food. With the exception of some salt in my eggs or my potatoes or sometimes my polenta, I'm pretty much able to leave everything else alone outside of whatever a recipe might call for.

My mate Paul Kidd met me at the airport and thank goodness he did. The Perth summer was still hanging on for dear life and I was exhausted. We got me into my room and I was on the verge of a brown-out from the heat and the journey. Paul had brought me an egg salad sandwich to start on, and he'd also brought a bunch of 'cook in the room with the tea water' stuff such as ramen and instant mashed potatoes. I was also looking forward to being fully awake enough to see what comestibles were in the neighborhood.

I set up my laptop and logged on to check in with folks and let them know I'd arrived.

An aside -- electronics: You can pretty much charge or plug in anything you bring with you from the USA and all you need is an adapter, meaning a plug with Australian prongs that fits over your American prongs to make it fit into the wall socket. Your laptop and your phone (if it works there) and your video camera should be able to handle the Australian power levels. The exceptions are hair items, such as hair dryers or curling / straightening devices. My advice is to contact the concierge / hotel staff of wherever you're going to be staying and tell them what you need and ask where to buy it when you get there. Or if you're going to Australia to visit a friend, have that friend do the legwork. Just trust me on this one, build it into your budget and take it home with you as a souvenir or leave it behind at the front desk for a charity or something. Don't monkey around with those bulky converters; they are heavy and expensive.

When it was time to shower, the following things caught my attention in the hotel's bathroom.

First, there were these instructions on how to turn on the faucets:

See that? A hotel has posted a deliberate set of instructions advising their customers to turn on the hot water first. What this means is that if you follow these posted instructions and you get injured by the hot water you were specifically instructed to conjure, you will be able to sue their ass and quite possibly cover the cost of your entire trip.

And also, a traditional sign that accompanies the currently Australia-wide trend I have come to call "Green Guilt":

Dear Australian hotel -- I don't come on vacation here to be chastized or otherwise reminded about my environmental impact. I go on vacation to relax and temporarily set aside the world's problems. While I'm paying two hundred dollars a night for a room, I'm going to bathe and use the full flush and use the elevator and demand that my hotel room to be cleaned from top to bottom every single day. Sorry to disappoint you and to cut into your profit margins.

Next time -- more travel stuff!

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