Human limbs for dinner anyone?
July 16th, 2010
I’m involved in a project at the moment that’s all about weird restaurants around the world. It’s been a lot of fun (and a little scary) researching them and, if all goes well, it will be a lot of fun (and a little scary) going to them in person. And boy, there are some wacky folk out there not only opening these wacky restaurants but actually dining at them. My favourite so far is Hospitalis restaurant in Riga, Latvia where they serve hearty Latvian dishes and cake topped with realistic-looking body parts such as fingers, noses and tongues. The food is served (or hand fed if you’re in a straight jacket) by scantily clad nurses on gurneys and operating tables. The restaurant provides diners with cutlery such as syringes, tweezers and scalpels to devour their meals and guests are treated to disturbing dinner entertainment including… (read more)
Lunch with Captain America.
July 4th, 2010
It’s not easy to find an ‘American’ restaurant. This might seem hard to believe when on just about every suburban street corner is a McDonalds, KFC, Pizza Hut or Hungry Jacks (Burger King). But then again, you wouldn’t classify any of them as real ‘restaurants’ – or that they serve real ‘food’ for that matter. I wanted to take my American girlfriend Beth to an American restaurant in Melbourne for July 4th, but when I did a search on the net there really wasn’t much to choose from. There was T.G.I. Fridays (just an upmarket McDonalds really), Hollywood Palace (turned out to be a Greek restaurant) and a handful of ‘diners’ serving hamburgers and apple pie. In Melbourne you can dine on local cuisine at Laotian, Afghani, Eritrean, Somalian, Nepalese, Mauritian, Burmese, Iranian… (read more)
Brrrrrrrrr!
July 1st, 2010
The last few days in Melbourne have been cold (that’s a pic of me walking to my flat yesterday), including the coldest day in two years where the mercury didn’t quite make it to 10°C (50 fahrenheit). We do complain about the cold here in Melbourne (well, my mum and dad certainly do), but it’s not really that cold. The coldest overnight low we’ve ever had was -2°C (27 fahrenheit). That’s nothing. My girlfriend Beth comes from Minneapolis, Minnesota where it’s often below zero for more than three months of the year (as in it doesn’t get above zero at all in that time!). The coldest day recorded in Minneapolis is -41°C (-41.8 fahrenheit – celsius and fahrenheit actually catch up at -42). And it’s regularly gets to -30°C… (read more)
Brian in Byron (say that 5 times really fast).
June 7th, 2010
The program for the 2010 Byron Bay Writer’s Festival has just been released. It’s such a great program this year (and not just because I’m in it!). Amongst those literary luminaries appearing at this year’s festival (as well as poets, historians, journalists, novelists, playwrights, bloggers, song writers and biographers) are Fatima Bhutto (granddaughter of former Pakistan Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and niece of Benazir Bhutto), Bret Easton Ellis (author of cult classic American Psycho), Kathy Lette (of Puberty Blues fame), John Doyle (of Roy and H.G. fame), Tony Martin (of The D-Generation and The Late Show fame), Alex Miller (with just a couple of The Miles Franklin Literary Awards to his name), Reg Mombassa… (read more)
Five ways to shit your pants.
June 3rd, 2010
On my recent blog about my loop-de-loop flight on a Tiger Moth biplane one of my readers (thanks Adrian) said that he would have shat his pants if he’d done it. He also suggested that I do a blog about the scariest encounters in my travels. I have been scared a few times in my travels (restaurant bills in Europe scare the hell out of me for a start), but thankfully nothing too bad has happened to me – oh, beside getting a gun put to me head and almost dying in West Africa. Anyway, here is my Top 5 Scariest Encounters (in no particularly scary order):
Gun to the head – Trans Mongolian train, Russia
The train was trundling along through the middle of Siberia when I was confronted by two scarily drunk Russians on my way back from the dining car. One asked a me a question in Russian and… (read more)
I’ve been to Bali, too.
May 25th, 2010
I never wanted to go to Bali. I steered clear of the ‘Island of the Gods’ because I always thought it was more like ‘Island of the Yobs’. I imagined Bali to be full of seriously inebriated Aussies in Bintang singlets drinking buckets of iridescent cocktails in the Fair Dinkum Bonza Koala Bar. Okay, that pretty well sums up the crowd at Kuta Beach, but I’ve been to Bali three times in the past 18 months and become totally intoxicated by the place (and that intoxication had nothing to do with iridescent cocktails). And, if it wasn’t for my new book that I am writing (re-tracing the original Lonely Planet South East Asia on a Shoestring), then I may not have gone to Bali at all… (read more)
BYO sub machine gun.
April 25th, 2010
Yesterday I risked life (and losing my Spanish omelette breakfast) by flying upside down in a 1942 Tiger Moth biplane. My 30 minute joy flight (with ‘mild’ acrobatics) left from the Point Cook RAAF base and skirted the city before climbing above Port Phillip Bay for ‘more than mild’ acrobatics. I almost wet my pants and vomited at the same time on the first loop-de-loop. It really is rather disconcerting to be upside down with only a 70 year old seat belt from stopping you falling out. And just when I thought I was safe… (read more)
The gentle art of persuasion.
April 23rd, 2010
Last night I went to the program launch for the 2010 Emerging Writers’ Festival at the Wheeler Centre. I did feel a little out of place, though. And it wasn’t because I am already an ‘established writer’. Emerging writers are very cool – there was lots of groovy facial hair and hipster clothes going on. I hadn’t been to the Wheeler Centre before (it only opened earlier this year), and I was very impressed. The Wheeler Centre (named after Tony and Maureen of Lonely Planet fame) is the centrepiece of Melbourne’s UNESCO City of Literature Initiative and as well as hosting literary events is also home to the Victorian Writers’ Centre, Melbourne Writers Festival, Australian Poetry Centre and something called SPUNC… (read more)
Flights for $3 (inclusive of taxes and toilets)
April 11th, 2010
I’m off to Bali next month with my girlfriend Beth and I started looking at flights today. And being somewhat frugal I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the cheapest way to get there. After way too much time searching around I did find a cheap way, but it does mean detouring quite a bit. If we fly to KL with Air Asia (for $139 one way from Melbourne) we can get a flight from KL to Bali for $35. I’m not sure If we’ll do it because we’d have to pay for accommodation in KL and it does seem a lot of mucking about when we can fly direct to Bali in 6 hours, but boy wouldn’t it be fun being an ex-pat in KL. I’d be going to a different country every weekend if I worked in Malaysia. You could fly from KL to Singapore for $10, Krabi for $20 and Ho Chi Minh City for $25… (read more)
The Great Crash of 2010.
April 3rd, 2010
Well, it’s been a while since I last blogged but that’s because the hard drive on my computer crashed. As in died. As in gone and all my data gone and never to be seen again gone. I had backed up all my photos and music (thankfully), but not, well, everything else. I lost all my manuscripts (at least I have the finished books!) and. worst of all, I lost the current manuscript I’m working on. YES, I KNOW – why wasn’t I backing it up? That’s because I’m a dumbass. Oh well, back to the drawing board. I do have all my notes, so not all is lost. Anyway, I have a new hard drive and… (read more)