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Happy Xmas from a sunny Sydney

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What’s this you say?  A blog update from the Yorkshire Expat before the month is out?  Surely he is not in month 7 already?  No folks, I’m not.  And I’m not writing specifically to gloat about the glorious weather and tell you to be safe on the recent outbreak of black ice (if you are reading from the UK).  No, I’m writing for much simpler reasons.  Let me explain.

There are a couple of reasons. 

Firstly, quite a lot has happened this month.  And we are what, only half way through it.  A trifle more, probably, before you get to reading this, so I thought I would treat you all to two installments in December.  Call it an early Xmas present from me to you J

You know how tiresome I can sometimes get, “waffling on” as a friend accused me of recently.  So by chunking into two episodes I am more likely to retain my loyal readership.  That’s assuming there is actually anybody reading this.  My sister always tells me she is the first to read it but I’m sure she is just trying to be nice.

And secondly, perhaps more importantly, more important than mere issues of me waffling on, is that I may not get to write a second blog.  You may not get to read a second blog.  Why is this?  Well, the 21st December is mooted to be the end of the world.  The Apocalypse.  A Mayan prophecy?  It could even be the infamous Zombie Apocalypse but I must admit to switching off when I hear people talk of their contingency plans in the event of an attack.  

I hear that we need to find high ground.  Avoid Coles the supermarket (apparently Zombies would laugh at your stupidity going there and come and snaffle you up).  I’m not sure if it is specifically Coles that poses a threat.  Maybe you would be safe in Woolworths.  Who knows?   The sea is no defence either, remembering zombies can walk on the sea bed.  How could you ever forget!  Basically, if they come, we are up the creek without a paddle.  So just make sure you have your “zombie survival kit” under your bed.  A few tins of beans, water and a shovel should suffice.  Apparently.

Should they come for us*, I want you all to know, I love (loved) you.  Just in different ways.

On a lighter note, the festive party season has commenced.  We have had the work Xmas party, which was very enjoyable.  How could it not be, 200 IT staff in one room together? *tries to keep a serious face*.  We managed to circumvent the free bar closing at 2.30pm by tactically ordering bottles of wine from different, unsuspecting wait staff.  I managed to stop myself from drinking a whole bottle of Cabernet, due to the fact I had a 5.15pm Spanish lesson.  And a true story; what would the odds have been on one of the night’s phrases being, el esta borracho? (he is drunk).  Madre mia.

At the party, a friend said to me, “I have not been this drunk since….September 2009”.  Did I admit that I hadn’t been drunk since…the weekend?  Not on your nelly.

The second Xmas party drinks were hosted by the recruitment agency I got my job through.  Myself and a colleague went along after work expecting a sedate evening.  We should have known this wasn’t going to be the case when we arrived at the venue, a swanky city bar, and were given the wristbands for the free drinks.  And when I say free drinks, we had a choice of a full bar.  That said, I probably shouldn’t have been drinking beer, followed by red wine, followed by spirits.  Or should I?  I had no Spanish lesson to go to, or no other pressing engagements.  I think the alcohol was loosening a few tongues and some of the stories of swinging suburbia in Sydney were quite eye opening.  In another of the tales, exactly how do the knickers of a friend’s wife end up in the tree in your garden?  My weekends are positively tame in comparison.

My last weekend comprised me loaning a Xmas tree off a Twitter friend.  I had mentioned on the micro blogging site that I was on the lookout for a tree and a Twitter follower in Sydney replied that they had one I could borrow.  A few Tweets later and arrangements were made for the drop on Saturday.  So, thanks @NickiGirlStar I still haven’t put it up yet, but the wine remains in the fridge ready for the task. 

On that note, I will bid you farewell, let you get back to your Baileys, mince pies and Bing Crosby soundtrack, and wish you all a Happy Xmas. 

Eat, drink and be very merry.

*Important note for mum, I don’t really believe the Zombies are coming.  I know how you take everything I say so seriously.  And yet I still love you.

And into month 5 we rock

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I say it every month.  I will probably keep saying it every month.  So, apologies in advance.  Am I in month 5 of this new life already?  The days and weeks are flying by, to the extent that I am already one and half months into my 6 month work contract.  Where did those weeks go?

Now, we are on the run up to Xmas, and some well needed time off work.  I suspect the next few weeks will go equally as fast.  The second half of my Spanish course.  Which, by the way, I am really enjoying.  Something I should have done a long time ago.  Regular gym visits, now I have formally committed and joined on a 6 month contract.  Nothing to do with the manager being a very attractive girl who twisted my arm into joining.  Nothing at all.  How shallow do you think I am?  Football twice a week, with the odd after football beer (or 3).  We do play on Thirsty Thursday after all, and from what I have seen the last few weeks, Thursday looks a particularly good day to wet your whistle.

Santa lording it over Darling Harbour
Did I mention Xmas?  Oh yeah, I’m sure I have seen Santa around town.  But if it wasn’t for the incongruous tree, basking in the mid-day sun in Martin’s Place, or the one below lighting up the interior of the Queen Victoria Building (QVB) one could be forgiven for forgetting we are in the Yuletide season.  Yes, some shops have trimmed up.  Or at least, made a token effort.  Some of the Xmas trees they have put up have seen better days.  If there was a “Comic Relief” charity for sorrowful looking trees, these specimens are the ones you would see on your screen.  Paraded against a backdrop of “Everybody Hurts” by REM.  I saw one in Starbucks that looked as though it had had all its pine needles stolen.  With all the money Starbucks are saving on unpaid taxes in the UK, you would think they could afford a healthier looking tree.

QVB xmas tree, or part of it.  It goes through 3 floors

With Xmas comes yet another birthday.  Not that I have ever worried about them.  What’s age but just a number.  I’ve never let it define me, or influence how I live my life.  That said, I do use the time, strategically placed at the end of the year, to reflect on what I have achieved the preceding year.  And this year, it is fair to say, has been a productive one for me personally, one in which I feel I have continued my growth as a person.  Moving to the other side of the world, on my own, was never going to be easy.  But it was something I wanted to do, and so to coin a phrase, “I felt the fear and did it anyway”.  

And here we are, entering month 5, and the festive season.  A time I am looking forward to, with visits from friendly faces from home, to help celebrate Xmas and New Year.  I suspect it will be a fun filled time, with plenty liquid refreshment and a champagne fuelled, inebriated Skype call home on Xmas Day to speak to mum, my sisters and my nephews and niece.  As I nurse the resulting hangover, I’ll be wondering what next year will bring as I continue to search for my raison d’etre.

Glebe Street Fair

The last month in Sydney has seen my going to a few street fairs on the weekends.  These are always bigger events than I anticipate.  I went to the Glebe Street Fair the other day and was staggered by how busy it was.  Glebe Point Road was full of market stalls, end to end, with evocative food smells drifting in the air, and the number of Sydney-siders who had come out in their droves to support it was truly impressive.  A fantastic community effort all round.  I had a mooch around, sustained by a coffee from Mano Espresso, as recommended by a new twitter friend, @NickiGirlStar.  Twitter really does open up a world of local knowledge when used well.  I have also been getting good coffee and food recommendations from @msnessiel, another virtual Sydney neighbour from cyber space.  It is not who you know, but rather, who you don’t know.

One recommendation that didn’t come from Twitter was “Scenic Dogging”.  I didn’t know what it was either.  Honest.  On a recent day out at Bradley’s Head, Mosman, (one of Sydney’s best look out points) on arrival a friend said it looked a great place for this afore mentioned, unknown to me, activity of scenic dogging.  I’m not sure what surprised me more.  The fact that I immediately agreed with him, once he explained to naïve little me what it meant, or who the suggestion came from.  Maybe that young man has secrets we don’t know about.  Not as innocent as he appears.  He did seem rather well acquainted with the bush up there.  Stop it!  You know I mean’t the Australian bush.  Such filthy minds.

As we roll into December, we usher in summer.  Scooter rides in thongs (the Australian version), long lazy days at the beach, apple based alcoholic refreshments in the local.  Spending the evening on a new hobby.  Counting freckles.  The sun brings them out you see, and it’s a good barometer of how well you are catching the sun.  Whilst always remembering the sunscreen.  Which is as tenuous a link as is needed to re-post this fantastic song again. Sunscreen song.  Working on getting the tan just right for when Pommie friends visit, and I can sufficiently gloat.  Well, after all, isn’t that why I moved here?

Hasta luego chicos and see you in month 6.

Forget the olympics, now the real countdown begins

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Despite knowing for a long time this is what I was going to do, it was still surprisingly hard to press the “proceed” button. Having searched for, and found, exactly the flights I wanted, I just needed to enter my credit card details and it would all become real.

Then why did the butterflies immediately kick in? Why did a tsunami of indecisiveness wash over me? Maybe it is the reality that the clock now starts ticking. Each day that passes is one less that I will live in the UK. Knowing that I do really now have to start tying up the loose strings of my English life. Closing down bank accounts. Cancelling memberships. Packing up belongings. Saying those emotional goodbyes to family and good friends. Not really sure of when I will be seeing many of them again.

Or maybe it’s not that at all. Perhaps it is just the fact that I now realise, and it’s starting to sink in, that I will have to rescind the season ticket for my beloved Manchester United, the team that I first watched live in the late 1970s. In the days when football was football. The Theatre of Dreams was simply, Old Trafford. And the glory days of Best, Charlton and Law were nothing but a distant memory. Long gone, with me continually suffering through the 80s at the hands of the red half of Merseyside. That, of course, was until the day at Crossley Heath school in 1986 when I heard that big Ron Atkinson had been sacked and a dour Scotsman called Alex Ferguson was on his way south. The rest, as they say, is history.

So, I have my flights. On 1st August i will be leaving these shores and heading down under. And yes, it’s a very long flight, so i’ve pushed the boat out (on a plane?) and for the first time ever I booked business class seats (in keeping with ticking things off my life bucket list). Singapore Airlines will be taking me, via Munich, to Singapore, a city I’ve visited on a few occasions, always enjoying the great restaurants, and (exorbitantly) expensive nightlife. Little wonder that Nick Leeson had to resort to being a rogue trader to fund his flashy lifestyle and late nights in “Harry’s Bar”.

Three days later I will be headed to Perth. Glorious Perth. Gateway to beautiful Fremantle, and quite possibly some of the best fish and chips in the whole of Australia, from Cicerello’s by the marina. Afterwards, washed down by a delectable home brewed beer from the Little Creatures micro brewery. I will also take a side trip to Rotto, Rottnest Island, and visit the famous little quokas. It was the quokas that gave Rottnest it’s name, as the early Dutch explorers sailed past, thinking they could see large rats, hence coining the sobriquet, Ratnest Island.

After my week in Perth, and catching up with family, it will be time for another bucket list item. One of the world’s greatest rail journeys. One that many people think I’m mad for doing and look completely perplexed when I say I’m choosing to do. The epic Indian Pacific train journey from Perth to Sydney, taking 3 whole days, leaving just once a week, and rocking into Sydney every Wednesday morning. Can’t you just get a flight and do it in 5 hours, they ask? Well, even if you need to ask that question, we have a very different attitude to travelling.

There we have it. Plans made. Countdown starts. My days in blighty are, literally, numbered.

Will I become a “Pom in Paradise?” Watch this space.

Our Fran in Havana

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Caveat emptor. Let the buyer beware indeed! Then again, shopping in Havana isn’t the same multi sensual experience it is as I’m walking around the Trafford Centre. It’s not even just as simple as going along to the, depleted, stores with your wallet. You need to make sure you have the correct currency for a tourist. That’s right, there are two currencies, one for locals and one for tourists.

Since Fidel Castro ruled out the US$ as a legal currency in Cuba in 2004, it was replaced with a “convertible peso”, CUC$. This is what we use. The locals meanwhile use the plain old peso.

So, armed with my CUC$ I headed to the nearest “supermarket” to buy some much needed sun cream. An easy task in most parts of the world. Not so in Havana. Where the big, 1950s style shops are emptier, of goods, than they are full. That said, I did find one bottle that looked suspiciously like sun cream, and it had a big red SPF4 on the front. Result. A high factor sun block to protect me as I wander around, exploring Habana Vieja.

Fast forward to lunchtime, sat in the café, inspecting my throbbing arms. They had come to resemble some of the sausages that suffered at one of my late dad’s (referring to his passing, not his tardiness) bbqs. The cream I had bought for the princely sum of approx. £1.20, was about as much use as a Starbucks loyalty card in a Cuban coffee shop.

I had more success in picking up some cheap sunglasses. Another packing failure. You might be wondering what I did pack, bearing in mind I was coming on a summer holiday, to gorgeous sunshine, with no sunglasses or sun cream. Live and learn is my motto.

So, off I went, to try and pick a pair up, armed with my new word of the day, gafas de sol – sunglasses. The first doorway with a cardboard stand holding sunglasses was presided over by a quite imposing looking lady. I pointed to the ones I wanted, so I’d resemble Mr Blonde from Reservoir Dogs, and asked, “Cuanto cuesta?”

Ten, she replied in Spanish. OK, time to bargain, and I countered with “cinco?”. Offering 5, I thought she would meet me half way. No. Ten, she growled back. I know which battles I’m destined to lose, and this was one of them. Undeterred, I went a couple of doorways down, met with a much more amenable stall holder, and bartered the exact same pair for 8CUC$. The best £5 I have spent for some time.

Let’s go to work.

And so it was, I wanted to go to Havana

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Watching the Godfather and how the gangsters such as Meyer Lansky, friend of the then dictator Batista, had to flee their illegal casinos on New Years Eve 1958 as Fidel marched into town, announcing the revolution, I wanted to go to Havana.

Visiting Rosario in Argentina, the birthplace of Che Guevara, and in later years visiting his family home in Alta Gracia, near Cordoba, I wanted to go to Havana.

Reading the great novels of Hemingway, affectionately known in Cuba simply as “Ernesto”, and about how he frequented the bars, one of the most famous now being La Floridita, I wanted to go to Havana

Watching 13 Days, the film based on the tense times in the JFK administration during the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, and the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, I wanted to go to Havana.

Watching footage over the years of the rather bizarrely dressed, often in a tracksuit, little man in a green cap and long beard, I wanted to go to Havana.

Reading Graham Greene, I determined that one day, I would be THAT man in Havana.

Pablo Escobar’s Medellín

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Medellin’s Most Famous Son

I couldn’t come to Medellin without paying a visit to it’s most famous son. I didn’t actually see him, obviously, but his grave is one of the stops on the Pablo Escobar tour. Not only was I here to see the modern Medellin, but I was also here to see Pablo Escobar’s Medellin.

Since I went on this trip, back in 2011, we have Netflix, which has brought excellent “Narcos” To our living rooms. Through this, a lot of you will have heard of Pablo Escobar. Many may not, but prior to this trip my knowledge was drawn from the well written, and excellently researched “Killing Pablo” by Mark Bowden, seeing Pablo depicted in the Johnny Depp movie Blow, and also that Pablo managed to make Medellin, and Colombia one of the most dangerous places in the world through the 80’s and early 90’s as a result of his management of the billion dollar Medellin drug cartel, trafficking cocaine all over the world. At one point, there was alleged to have been approx 1 million people directly working for the Medellin cartel, all under the rule of Pablo Escobar.

Medellin – Post Pablo Escobar

Since his death, a day after Escobar’s 44th birthday in 1993, Medellin is a city transformed. No longer afraid of being shot down in the street or being blown up by one of the many car bombs of the period, the locals have taken to the streets and now can be seen in one of the cities many sidewalk cafes, bars and restaurants. I have to agree with the current tourist slogan about Colombia. “The only danger you face is that you may not want to leave”.

The Pablo Escobar Tour

Feeling far from danger, I joined a tour which was run by a local couple who run Paisa Road tours and do the twice daily tour (min 4 people) from the Casa Kiwi hostel in the Zona Rosa. Incidentally, a fantastic hostel, if you are in the neighbourhood. Picking us up at 10.30am, I had one of the most interesting 3 hours of my life.

We got an unbiased take of the rise and subsequent, very dramatic, fall of Escobar, straight from the mouth of a Paisa, a local of Medellin. I make this point as there have been numerous other books, painting Escobar in various lights from a Robin Hood type character who just tried to help the poor, to a worldwide criminal who was merciless in killing anybody who dared to stand in his way. With police, politicians and generally anybody who opposed him, his motto was “plata o plomo”, a Spanish phrase meaning silver (money) or lead (bullet), a simple choice in the world of Escobar.

We travelled around Medellin visiting various sites and buildings of interest. Escbar left a big legacy in Medellin in bricks and mortar. Always white buildings too, his homage to the white cocaine he traded in. As Tony Soprano cleaned his dirty money through a “waste management” company, Escobar had his own construction company. And most of his buildings remain, including the first apartment building he built solely for his family. Aside from his security, he only had his 5 family members living here. This was until a drug cartel from a rival city, Cali, planted a car bomb outside and destroyed a lot of the building. It was then taken over by the police but Escobar left a lasting reminder, paying a couple of guys to spray the building with machine gun fire as it was occupied by the police. The bullets hole sprayed across the outside of the building can still clearly be seen from the road.

The home of Pablo Escobar in Medellin
Pablo’s home in Medellin

Humble Beginnings

Pablo Escobar came from humble beginnings but as a child always declared it was his ambition to be rich. It is fair to say that he achieved this. In 1989 Forbes magazine had him as the 7th richest man in the world. He once reputedly burned $2million in US dollars just to keep warm. At his peak, he offered to strike a deal with the president of Colombia. He would repay the national debt to the US in return for impunity against his drug trafficking. An offer refused.

An expert in people management he knew how to get the local community on his side. He built new houses for them and gave them away for free. He built new schools and football pitches. People from the street loved him. However, the other side to Escobar was how He went about building his empire and disposing of his enemies. He is credited with inventing the concept of “sicarios”, hit men who prowled the streets of Medellin on motorbike, killing policemen. Reportedly paid $1000US for every policeman they killed, one year saw over 400 policemen murdered on the streets, often by corrupt colleagues who saw it as easy money.

The Beginning of the End

The tide started turning against Escobar when he blew up a passenger jet on a domestic Colombian flight. His target was a high ranking politician, who incidentally didn’t take the flight. The bomb on the plane exploded, causing the death of nearly 100 innocent Colombians. As well as at home, he was also attracting interest from the US due to the fact that 80% of the cocaine being used in the US was being sourced directly through Escobar in Colombia.

The net started closing in on Escobar in December 1993 with a task force of Colombian police and the CIA from the USA. A day after he celebrated his 44th birthday, police flooded the city of Medellin in the search for him, and using sophisticated telephone tracing technology, he was tracked down to his aunt’s house in a middle class barrio of Medellin. The photos show the outcome as Escobar and his bodyguard, “Lemon” tried to escape by jumping out the window at the back and escaping over the roof. The guy in the red t-shirt is an American CIA agent.

Pablo Escobar meets a grizzly end in Medellin.

Killed, or suicide?

Still in debate to this very day was how did he actually die? He vowed he would never be taken alive, preferring “a grave in Colombia than a cell in America”. Family of Escobar insist that he committed suicide, whilst the security forces took great delight in claiming the scalp of Escobar. However it happened, he was finally dead and Colombia could start the very long process of rebuilding.

It was no longer Pablo Escobar’s Medellin.

The grave of Pablo Escobar in Medellin
Pablo’s final resting place