Roger Summerill, the manager of the ABC’s successful Sydney radio station 702, is about to retire. He steps down next month and true to form, the ABC can’t quite decide on his successor. So the Melbourne-based head of ABC Radio, Sue Howard, has okayed a three-way trial to find a replacement. The three candidates — James O’Brien, program director at 702; Mike McCluskey, manager of the ABC local radio station in Newcastle, and the program director at 774 in Melbourne — will all get the chance to manage 702 for a month each and the choice will then be made. O’Brien has been as much responsible for the success of 702 as Summerill, so insiders think he should get a chance to show if he can make the next step up. At least the ABC has candidates — over at SBS Radio I hear the selection process for the new senior executive team is running very late, with a shortage of candidates. —
I went to the Powerhouse Museum last night for the launch of this year’s Sydney Design Festival and had a really great time. As you might expect at a Design Festival Launch, there were many photographic opportunities, including the chance to photograph the woman featuring in the publicity alongside some of the publicity material.
There were also opportunities for people to get hair and makeup done, with a disturbing number choosing to have theirs done in the style of a 1980s New Romantic. Given the age of some people doing this, I suspect it was less retro, and more remembrance.
Even the food and waiters looked well designed. There was one, a guy from Lithuania with designer hair. He told us he was in Australia for 5 months (maybe longer) to improve his English. All I can say is thank goodness for the Eurovision Song Contest, which allowed me to know right off the top of my head the capital of Lithuania was Vilnius!
I’m heading off to quite a few events under the design festival banner, which I’ll be blogging about.
When you have a computer that takes, literally, ten to fifteen minutes to boot up every day, you need something to pass the time. I check my mail, I check my voice-mail, and I take a swig or two on the coffee I’ve picked up on the way to work.
My favourite shop for coffee is “Coffee Trails” at Railway Square. I’ve been going there for almost as long as they’ve been open. I even follow them, and they follow me on Twitter. The shop has a good vibe about it, and they make good coffee. Clearly, however, I’ve been extolling their virtues far too much, as they’ve become more and more popular. Lately, the queue has been, literally, out the door. How I long for the days when they had just a loyal, but small customer base.
But I keep going back, because they known my name, they’re lovely people, and they make good coffee. But from time to time, lately, I’ve become a little promiscuous when it comes to purchasing coffee. If the queue there is too long, I’ll go to another “hole in the wall coffee shop”. And if it’s too busy there, I’ll try another. Just the other day, though, just about everyone in Sydney seemed to be purchasing coffee, and everyone had such a long queue, that I was forced to go to work without a coffee. I know, I know. First world problems.
We certainly seem to have embraced the coffee lifestyle in Sydney, or perhaps it’s just more and more people living in the city?
Also, I have a slightly weird theory though that we’ll see health problems emerge in a couple of years time, as people come down with a mystery illness due to the “leached plastic” in their systems due to the coffee cup lids. Seriously guys, it’s time to take the plastic lid off the paper cup.
This was my third week of travelling to Canberra for work, with only another week left. To be honest, I’m starting to feel a little fatigued with all of the hotel living and bus commuting. And so today, I spent the day largely doing nothing at all. Tomorrow will be busier, meeting a friend for brunch, and then meeting another friend at the Marriage Equality Rally. But today, has just been a day of peace and quiet.
Despite the fatigue, I’m really enjoying my time in Canberra. For a lad from the country who has spent the last twenty-something years in Sydney, it’s the kind of place I could consider for retirement: bigger than a country town, but more affordable than Sydney, and with a lovely balance between the local and the global.
“Is there anyone here who is Swedish?’, the young woman on stage asked tonight at Sydney’s Arthouse Hotel. As much as I was tempted to reply “yes”, I figured it was a little too much for me to claim Swedishness, since I was descended from a varied group of English, Irish and Scottish settlers and convicts, including a family who had arrived in Australia on the Third Fleet. There’s a fair bit of my ancestry I’m unsure about, but I’m guessing it’s mostly Irish genes that I have. “Put your hands down”, she said to the nearby group of Danes.
In the mid-evening break, I chatted with the woman who had told her story of being a Youth Exchange student in the far north of Sweden (about 600km from Stockholm, she told me) and who discovered the delights of fika. Fika is the Swedish word which I understood to mean a coffee break. But in the far north of Sweden where she lived for a year, fika meant consuming large amounts of cakes.
It was her story around the theme of “vice” which she told as part of Now Hear This, a story-telling night which has recently begun in Sydney, and which I have some involvement with (disclosure). “It’s a bit like The Moth” I’ve told a few people.
The second story tonight also had a theme I could relate to: researching family history. The bloke, obviously a retired gentleman, spoke of his “addiction” to travelling to cemeteries and hotels in search of long lost grandfathers. I knew exactly what he was talking about, as you may have noted from the many adventures on my website.
As someone who has spoken quite publicly about her experiences with weight loss and gastric banding, the host of “Now Hear This”, Melanie Tait spoke about her vice – chocolate.
The combination of Swedishness and chocolate opened up a desire in me also. And so on the way home, instead of catching a cab straight from the hotel, I walked through Hyde Park and headed towards Sydney’s Oxford Street.
As I’ve noticed previously, there have been a number of stores in Sydney which have recently been selling the Swedish confectionary, Daim. Those locations have included my own local convenience store, as well as convenience stores on Broadway. Sadly, “supplies” have dried up, and so I headed with an almost manic desire in my eyes towards Duffy Brothers supermarket on Oxford Street, which I’d known previously to have sold the authentic Swedish version of Daim. They had also previously stocked another well known Swedish brand, Marabou. As the woman who spoke on stage tonight had observed, the Swedes know how to do sweets very well. In fact, I read the other day, Swedes were the largest consumers of sugar in the world.
Like a junkie looking for a hit, I walked back and forward along the chocolate aisle at the Duffy Brothers, only to discover they no longer stock Daim or Marabou.
Melanie Tait hosts Now Hear This
Daim and Marabou previously spotted at Duffy’s in May 2012
“That’s an Irish name, isn’t it?”. the English bloke guiding the check-in queue at Berlin-Tegel Airport said to me this morning, adding “When was the last time you were in the UK?”. “Nine years ago”, I told him as he looked closely at my passport, adding that I was ninth generation Australian. And then he laughed, perhaps realising how it was probably a stupid comment to make,
But interestingly, I remember a similar comment – the Irish thing – being made back then by the blokes at passport control at both London City and Heathrow Airports, as we travelled to and from the Irish Republic. Coming back from Ireland, I was asked how long I’d been in the Irish republic and what I’d been doing there. At that time, there was a Northern Ireland ceasefire in place, but there was still obviously some tension between the English and the Irish. Nine years later, it surprised me such a common surname would still spark some interest and such a comment.
Oddly enough, coming through UK Customs, there were no questions asked. Well just one. And it was the same question they asked nine years ago, which contrasted the UK and the Irish officials in a very subtle way. In the Irish Republic they asked, “How long are you staying for?”, whereas in the UK, they asked, “When are you leaving?”.
I never ended up leaving the hostel last night. After seven or eight weeks (I’ve lost track) on the road, I’m starting to feel a little bit of travel fatigue. It’s not so much the physical fatigue (though I do feel a little bit of that), it’s more the mental fatigue. That said, I was a bit tired after the big walking tour yesterday, so I just stayed in, hand-washed some clothes, had a few beers, and surfed the internet.
Once again on this trip, quite by accident, I had found myself staying in a hostel with an Australian connection. Most of the staff seemed to be Australians, and so while sitting in the cafe, there was a steady stream of Midnight Oil, Choirboys, etc playing over the sound system. It was also kinda nice to have an understanding laugh from the barman when I explained why I was changing beers… “It’s because the other one takes too long and this one pours faster”. “Only an Australian would say that”, I thought to myself.
And so I read and wrote some emails, looked at Facebook and Youtube, and then read some of the reviews about the hostel I’d booked into in Paris. What I hadn’t realised when I made the booking a few weeks ago is that it was an all-male (read “gay”) hostel. And when I read the reviews, which were very critical of the hostel for both safety, security, and (most of all) cleanliness, I went looking for somewhere else for the first two nights in Paris. The place I’ve found is also a St Christopher’s Inn, and although a little out of the way, all of the reviews I’ve read have been very positive about this new hostel which opened only in January this year.
But here I am in London. And with a couple of hours to fill before I catch up with my mate Paul, I’ve popped into a groovy little bar for some lunch, and to make use of their wifi connection. And guess what? More bloody Australians.
Groovy little bar in London called The Hoxton Pony
