London ... Oh, London

Damn. Left my camera in the apartment. Well, no pictures this time. Yes, where was I ... arrive din London to very chilly temperatures indeed. The Beaver was not what it lived up to be - a very tiny room, limited toilet paper and no orange juice for breakfast. Apart from that, the first few days were hectic city. Nightmare organising to get the hell out of Beaver, get an apartment, for which we were suitably ripped off paying someone to organise one for us at 89 quid. Got our apartment, but not really, have to spend time in an apartment where the toilet and shower are a walk in robe (number two's in this piece of art make for interesting times) with no room to turn pretty much and very small living area. This is temporary before our 'real' apartment is vacated. Job searching has proved a little more difficult than expected. Must be very competitive here for contracting jobs, but there have bites here and there and I start a short term contract tomorrow in Beaconfield, about 30 minutes north of London. Better than nothing and good to start burning 'earned' English pounds rather than that feathery Australian dollar. Anyways, must go, gotta switch computers to read up on some stuff. Ciao for now. LuCo. (the pictures will explain this entry a little better when they come). Monkey.

THE FORGOTTEN sound of Asia. Truly a wondrous natural phenomenon primarily displayed by your male MLCs (MainLand Chineses as they are known in Macau). I was unable to catch this striking behaviour on film, not due to its scarcity but by the sheer speed with which it occurs. I have recreated the phenomenon under controlled conditions after studying long and hard its occurence in the natural environment, but am sadly unable to attach to this blog due to the stingy blogspot people. However, subsequently, city infrastructure needs to accomodate this flemmy behaviour, as demonstrated by the numerous 'spittles' around town, which more often than not contained a solid few millilitres of saliva and hell knows what else.



We stayed on the island of Taipa, connected to Macau by numerous bridges, and which is a little less frantic than Macau. Taipa doesn't have a lot action going down, but has spectacular views of Macau (especially by night when the casinos light up).



Also located on Taipa is the Macau Jockey Club where friends of the Coe family train and run horses. We hit the races twice during our stay, and were lucky to see two horses trained by Geoffrey Lane (the family friend) win races . We also won a bit of money ourselves, though you tend to get worked up with winnings, forgetting the exchange rate of Patacas to the Aussie dollar (about 5.5). So those hundreds don't quite end up being so much. Anyways, off the track we checked out Geoffrey's stables which were very interesting for a non-country boy such as myself.



Seeing horses get their teeth cleaned was definitely interesting as well. Apparently, the bucket housing the dentist's cleaning utensils has an odour to die from following cleaning, and as evidenced here by the sheer displeasure shown on the horse's face from having to be in a stable with the bucket outside the door.



We also checked out the local Portugese fort, built to protect Macau from invasion by those scummy Dutch, trying to get hold of the island to use as a pathway for trade with China.



And it is from this fort that I point my large canon in the direction of the balmy and sunny United Kingdom, where the Beaver Hotel in Earl's Court awaits our arrival.



And so we have arrived in a fricking freezing beyond belief London. The Beaver has been great to recover from a little jet lag and get our bearings. Accomodation and jobs are on the way. When I have some UK stories to share I will put them up here so feel free to check back and avoid the travellers spam. Later.