Reflections on Melbourne - May 2007

My job took me to Melbourne in May and the thing I remember the most is the boredom. Australia is very like the United States. Flying fifteen hours to get to a place the reminds me of a cross between Baltimore and Las Vegas makes me cranky.

I stayed at this big hotel casino very like any big Las Vegas hotel casino with lots of gaming, fancy shops and restaurants. The first day, my business associate did the first of two non-boring things in Melbourne. We saw the Collingwood v. Carlton Aussie rules football match at the Melbourne Cricket Grounds.

Australian football is weird. They play on a round field with no pads – just shorts and tanktops. Each quarter is thirty minutes long and each quarter seems to begin and end with opposing team members beating the crap out of each other. They just punch each other while the umpires blow their whistles without intervening in any way. Eventually the guys get tired of punching each other and the game resumes. I wonder what would happen if they didn’t get tired of punching each other. I didn’t understand the game at all. It was more like soccer than football but they ran with the ball in their hands and they could stop and kick it any time they wanted.

One night my business associate wanted to go walk around and take some photographs so we did. A couple of young guys were teaching par cours to a lot of young people. They took a running jump at this big fake Aztec pyramid looking thing and attempted to vault over it. Most of them ended up planting their hands at the top of the wall and climbing over, but the fact they were doing it was cool enough.

After the par cours kids left we sat at the bottom of the pyramid and watched the Worst Juggler in the Universe create a ladder of crates upon which he stood and dropped juggling objects (bowling pins, balls of various sizes) down to his assistant below. I think the idea was that he would be juggling from the great and treacherous height, but it's hard to juggle when one can only throw and not catch. My business associate took some pictures of these guys. I thought about telling him not to, knowing that street performers usually expect compensation for being photographed, but ultimately I decided that it was not my problem. I had forgotten about the Worst Juggler in the Universe until much later when we were on a very different part of the river, heading back to the hotel when the Worst Juggler in the Universe accosted Michael and the crosswalk.

"Hi mate, I noticed you were taking some video of my show back there."

"It was just some stills."

"Well, you see, mate, I'm usually compensated for my image. I have a business. I can get you a card. My attorney..."

"I'll delete them."

"But..."

My associate turned his back on the Worst Juggler in the Universe and didn't look back. I was ready to jump in just in case the skinny hippy looking kid took a swing, but he didn't. Not that my associate couldn't have handled him anyway.

The rest of the trip seemed to consist of me sitting in the Internet Cafe, wandering around looking for things to do that did not involve alcohol and not finding them. Not finding them, I ended up sitting in my room a lot eating room service, watching television and drinking alcohol.

The last day we took a play day in the Yarra Valley wine region. Our driver and guide was an old lady named Anne Marie who wasn't afraid to cuss and needed a cigarette every time we stopped. I liked Anne Marie. She took us to Chandon first. Chandon specializes in sparkling wines. I don't usually care for sparkling wines. The next stop was more agreeable and I ended up buying a nice bottle of merlot. The third stop was the Healesville Sanctuary, a wild animal park where we saw a very short (as it was raining) birds of prey show and jogged through half an hour of whatever animals we could see. We saw dingoes, platypi, kangaroos, wallabies and wombats. I stood about six feet from a koala that ignored me completely while chowing down on eucalyptis.

After two more wineries Anne Marie brought us back to the hotel and I flew home the next day.

A two-year-old kicked me the entire sixteen hour flight from Sidney. Wow.

Thanks for playing.