kimbofo

Things I haven't told you

• A few weekends ago I spent an evening in the company of the Sex Pistols. Yes, the crowd was full of punks -- old punks. But everyone was very polite. And the band was in great form and Johnny Rotten in fine voice! Afterwards, the group I was with headed into Chinatown and pigged out on crispy duck pancakes. Nothing like a bit of anarchy followed by delicious ethnic food and stumbling into your bed at 2 in the morning!

• Had lunch in a pub near Gloucester Road with Oz blogger Trevor Cook and his lovely wife one Sunday afternoon. What a lovely couple. We lost all sense of time talking about Australia, blogging, politics, the media and travel, and when we emerged from our cocoon it had turned dark and cold and very, very wet. You know you've had a good time when you don't notice the weather has taken a turn for the worse or that the evening has arrived without you even realising! We hope to do it all again one day, but hopefully in Sydney, where we can at least sit outside and enjoy some sunshine!

• Got all my hair lopped off. My new style looks a bit like Kylie's new mop. Short. Choppy. Lots of layers. But I haven't gone blonde. In case you were wondering.

• Had lunch with my doppleganger. I haven't seen her in more than three years. We once used to work together. You have no idea how odd it is to sit opposite someone who looks just like you. Freaky and fascinating at the same time.

• Have become addicted to Long Way Down on BBC every Sunday night at 9pm and Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares on Channel 4 every Tuesday at 9pm. God knows why. The first show is about two grumpy gits on motorbikes who complain about everything and the other is about a grumpy git who, well, complains about everything and says f**k ten times a minute. Can you sense a pattern here?

• Watched Kenny, a hilarious Australian movie, on DVD. My sister gave it to us for Christmas last year, but we couldn't play it because we don't have a region-free DVD player. I managed to get it to work on my laptop. Haven't laughed (nor cringed) so much in ages. Not sure it does much to alleviate the stereotype of Australians being bad travellers though -- but it does do a lot for portaloos!
  

Manhattan snaps

Place: Looking towards Midtown from Pier 86, on the Hudson River.
Date: Wednesday October 17, 2007.
Camera: Panasonic DMC-TZ3.

Will wonders never cease? I finally posted all my New York pictures on Smugmug. Yes, I know, it only took me 6 weeks!

As well as viewing my pictures from the top of the Rockefeller Building, you can now see all the snaps I took while I was on the Bike the Big Apple Bike Tour. All my other photographs -- and let me warn you now, there are a lot *cough cough* -- are in one big 152-pictures gallery entitled New York -- October 2007.

You might want to take a toilet break now before you start the marathon viewing session!

After 11-and-a-half years Australia gets a new prime minister

Despite the fact I am no longer entitled to vote in Australian elections (because I have lived outside the country for more than three years), I'm chuffed to hear that Prime Minister John Howard has been ousted. Labour leader Ken Rudd won a landslide victory -- or a Ruddslide as some have dubbed it -- with a national swing of 5.7 per cent. Crack open the champagne bottles!

Investing in a winter coat

I have spent the past week shivering my way to work. I do not own a winter coat, the last one having being devoured by moths about two years ago. I got through last winter, which was especially mild, wearing my ski-jacket.

So this afternoon I decided to rectify the situation before winter really sets in and I end up freezing to death mid-way between my front door and the tube station.

Up and down the Kings Road I trod. I think I may quite possibly have tried on every single mid-length winter coat that is currently on the market. I'm talking wool coats, wool-mix coats, coats made out of material so stiff it was like wearing sheet metal. There were coats with big buttons, little buttons, hidden buttons. Coats with high collars, huge wing collars, fur collars. Coats that were poo-brown, charcoal grey, cherry red. Coats that hung straight down, coats that swung out, coats that made me look like I was pregnant with twins!

In the end, after I was convinced it was time to admit defeat and go home empty-handed, I bought the last coat I saw. It was classically tailored. No frills. No flounces. It was also the most expensive coat I've ever been game to try on.  "Think of it as an investment," urged the sales assistant. "You won't have to buy another coat ever again."

As much as I hate to admit it, the pitch worked. I am now the proud owner of the most expensive item of clothing I have ever bought: a black 100 per cent cashmere coat.

And for the price I paid, I'll probably be wearing it all through the summer -- just to get my money's worth!

Tooth ache

I've just been to the dentist. The only thing he extracted was £45 from my bank account.

I suppose I should be pleased. I had rather suspected he was going to suggest doing a root canal, seeing as the last time I went -- back in January 2006 -- this treatment was on the cards.

Back then, an upper molar had to have a very deep filling put in and my dentist explained that it was likely that a root canal would be needed if the filling did not cure the dull ache I'd been experiencing at the time. Fortunately the ache went away and my tooth has felt perfectly fine... up until recently.

I have had a sore tooth on and off for a few weeks now, but in the early hours of Monday morning it became unbearably painful. Since then, every time I drink something hot the pain shoots right up my cheek and into my eye. Nice!

Anyway, the outcome of today's little visit, in which he prodded and poked all my teeth with blunt instruments, took a bunch of X-rays and carried out some tests on the nerves in my teeth by sticking cold cotton swabs in my mouth (ouch!), is that I just have to wait and see what happens. He seems to think the nerve in the aching tooth is still alive but may be on the way out, so he's asked me to let it be for a couple of weeks. If the pain becomes worse, then he will book me in for a root canal, but has stressed that that process is a last resort.

In the meantime, he's suggested I brush with a sensitive tooth toothpaste and stay away from acidic drinks and foods -- there goes my daily intake of pineapple juice!

The other good bit of news is that the rest of my teeth are in very good condition, despite the fact I haven't had a check up in almost two years! I do look after my chompers though (my dad will be pleased to hear that since he paid for all my orthodontic work when I was a kid) and rarely drink sugary drinks or sticky sweets (chocolate doesn't count, right?), so I'm happy about that. You count your blessings where you can.

My current favourite TV ad -- or why you shouldn't monkey around with chocolate

Top of the Rock

Place: Looking towards Central Park from atop the Rockefeller Centre observation deck, New York.
Date: Saturday October 20, 2007.
Camera: Panasonic DMC-TZ3.

Back in 2005, T and I queued for hours and hours and hours to get to the observation deck of the Empire State building. The view, of course, was amazing, but it was so windy and there were so many people up there that I wasn't convinced that all the queuing had been worth it.

So when I was researching my solo trip in October I decided I wasn't going to visit any tourist attractions that involved vast amounts of queuing. The Rockefeller Centre's newly opened observation deck on the 70th floor -- appropriately dubbed Top of the Rock -- seemed to fit this "rule". But just in case, I turned up early -- shortly after 9.30am on a bright, sunny Saturday morning -- and was pleasantly surprised that there were only a handful of people in front of me.

Upstairs, on the three-tier observation deck, there was plenty of freedom to move around and take in the breath-taking view without other people getting in the way. I had wanted to ring T and say "guess where I am?" but I couldn't get a signal. I took a stack of photographs to show him instead, and you can now view them here -- yes, I'm still sorting out my piccies a month later!

Cycling in Manhattan

Just in case you don't normally read my cycling blog, you might like to pop on over to find out about my 26-mile cycle trip around the streets of New York, which I took on my recent visit to the Big Apple.

Like living in Baghdad

For the past two weeks our evenings have been filled with the oh-so pleasant sound of fireworks being let off in the neighbourhood. The noise goes on well into the night, sometimes as late as midnight.

(It's all to do with some Catholic who tried to burn the Houses of Parliament down in the 16th century. But god knows why it's still celebrated in this country more than 400 years later!)

Tonight's explosions seemed a little closer than normal, so I took a peek out of the kitchen window and got treated to a dazzling display that lasted for about 15 minutes. I'm talking full-on professional pyrotechnics -- all the colours of the rainbow, shimmering and glittering in the dark sky above the local park. Quite beautiful really. But the sheer loudness is a real pain in the backside, and I'll be so glad when the fireworks season is over.

Mind you, as I have been sitting here writing this I suddenly experienced a weird sense of deja vu, and then I remembered I first wrote about this topic way back in 2003! Some things never change...

One reason you should leave the dead in peace

The London Bridge Experience is a new tourist attraction opening in the capital next month. I'm not making any plans to visit it. And this is why.

Creepy, no?