Will work for bulk bananas

Will work for bulk bananas
Originally uploaded by wonder geek.

The privilege of catching a lift on one of these incredible animals does come at a price - as many bananas as you can supply.

Once they've got the taste for them their amazingly flexible trunks snake out and relieve you of your banana stash...or if you're brave enough you can deliver them straight to the mouth!

Mad Hatter comes to the photo blogging party a leetle late.

Errrrrr, ok, have just figured out how to post up gratuitous piccys. Have not yet figured out how to put them into old postings (suggestions team?) so you will have to play 'match the random pic to the equally random blog' until i get up to speed. Enjoy!

Introducing a newbie blogger

I've never blogged before. I'm afraid to go out and blog alone. The MadHatter (my younger sibling) has invited me to add this "tramspotting" blog, until I loose my blogging cherry and become wise in the ways of the blog.

Soon, a friend and I will also be travelling to Vietnam (we're not very orginal in my family ;-). My friend has his own blog... I'm so ashamed. In a future installment I'll make you a link to it, if he lets me. We'll be going to both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. You might expect to hear more about cyclo Dalat when I get to HCMC. Until then...

GBFSB

Don't mess with the cyclo man.

Tonight is the first full moon of the new Chinese year and thus an important date for Vietnamese who pay their respects to their ancestors etc. They also flock to the fabulous pagodas that are dotted around HCMC and so I took the opportunity, with the assistance of my trusty cyclo man Dalat, to check out 3 of the pagodas and see how much passive incense smoking I could do in one morning.

The pagodas are amazing - incredibly intricate carvings and decorations with people carrying incense sticks absolutely everywhere. At the first one that I went to the door assistant gently thrust a bunch of incense sticks into my hands as I entered, which I then wandered around with feeling all warm and fuzzy until I copied the others and planted them in various bowls around the pagoda (I skipped the holding the incense to your forehead and bowing at everything in sight bit that came before).

I thought when I first went in that the people who looked like they were crying as they left were simply overcome by religious fervour. Turns out the incense smoke is so thick that your eyes start watering within seconds. The original plan was to visit 5 pagodas but after 3 I looked like I had been bawling for a week so I decided that 3 was enough.

When I left the 2nd pagoda I found my cyclo man in a full-on fist fight with another cyclo dude. This was serious biffo so I wandered down the road a bit and waited for my man to extract himself, which he did after a minute or so more. We carried on and he explained that the other man had mocked him...made mental note to never mock the cyclo man.

After my fit of religious enthusiasm I reverted to a bit of the old ultra-shopping. Hit the An Dong market which is mercifully free of tourists like myself (oh the hypocrasy! (and bad spelling!)) and cheaper again than the tourist areas. Bought a gorgeous wood chopstick box set for the magnificent price of $8 australian - and I was probably being ripped off. It's great to be in a place where even the tourist rip off prices are fantastic!

After that we headed to the Saigon War Surplus Market 'Dan Sinh' to pick up some obligatory American War remnants for my partner who is keen on that sort of thing. The vast bulk of the market comprises very (and some not so very) convincing replicas of war memorabilia ('american GI' zippo lighters that have been beaten up to look old, helmets, bags etc) that you can see the stall holders whipping up with their sewing machines. But if you ask the right questions and look carefully it is still possible to find some original stuff. I picked up 2 medals/badges from North Vietnamese (Viet Cong) and American Marine units as well as 2 American dog tags ($3US each). I am almost certain that the dog tags are real (I was offered both real and replica versions and there is a definite difference) so my partner and I will check their authenticity and maybe see if we can return them to their original owners.

I have been here for just on a week, and am very much in love with Saigon. I have long been in the habit of randomly smiling at people in the street - in Australia this usually results in a blank look but here you are repaid tenfold. Amazing smiles and 'hello's abound, especially off the main tourist strips :-)

I have also had the opportunity to see the extreme other side of Saigon, a world that I think many people don't know exists.

I caught up with a mate from 'Uc' (Australia) who, as it turns out, is one of Saigon's nouveau riche young elite. He picked me up and took me to his mum's place for drinks. For starters this was one of the most opulent private residences I've ever been to - and we're standing on the balcony overlooking the Saigon River when he points out the next house which apparently belongs to Ho Chi Minh City's President. To say that I felt somewhat underdressed in my cargo pants and t-shirt would be a monumental understatament. We then went for dinner with his cousins at a BBQ goat meat restuarant (thankfully not a dog meat one - had one of those, complete with dogs hanging in the window, pointed out to me by my every-helpful cyclo man the other day!) and then we hit the clubs.

The first place, the surreally named 'Apocalypse Now' had pretty good if slightly cheesy music, a mixed western/vietnamese crowd (complete with 2 bored looking 'ladies of the night' dancing with yukky overweight balding western men) and 2 security guards in full military uniform standing guard on the stage. A leetle bit of overkill I thought but you never know when a westerner riot might break out to the accompaniment of the dance remix of 'I will survive'.

At the 2nd place my mate's friends met us at the door and took us past the bouncers (I was the only non-Vietnamese there) and up the stairs to an incredibly plush bar/club. Beautiful young Vietnamese things were lounging around on comfy leather couches and armchairs, drinking diabolically expensive wine and spirits by the bottle. All but one of our party were studying in Australia and were back in HCMC for the holidays and made for very good company. It turns out that rich young vietnamese guys dance as well as gay white men - they were the ones standing up and dragging the girls up to dance! Much fun and drinking was has by all, and, as has happened every time I have been the guest of someone in Saigon, regardless of their income, I wasn't allowed to pay for anything. I think I have a lot of repaying of kindness to do when back in Australia.

So there you have it - one tourist's burblings about a very funky city. Can't wait to get back here later in the year :-)

By bus and boat to the mekong and back.

Ended up going on a Mekong river tour instead of the tunnels and temple, figure the tunnels will still be there when I come back next time but that China's spectacular damming efforts upriver on the Mekong might mean it was not so good later on.

So I went to the appropriately named Sinh Cafe, booked my tour and handed over the princely sum of $7 US for a full day tour, with aircon bus, tour guide, 2 river trips and lunch.

Boarded my bus at 8am in Saigon. Not normally a tour bus kind of girl but there was no way I could have done it cheaper so there you go. The Mancunian midwife on her midlife OE (beginning with an unplanned volunteer stint in Banda Aceh) that I sat next to was more than enough to keep the tour bus blues away.

After an entertaining toilet stop in which all the women piled off the bus and ran for the loos, only to recoil as they realised they were squat toilets (I on the other hand don't leave home without ample supplies of tissues or the ever-handy immodium: 2 of the traveller's best friends!) we carried on to our destination and were loaded on to a dinky authentic rickety tourist boat on a tributary of the Mekong.

From then on it was foreigner hijacking happy hour as we conducted our tour of the nifty rice paper making/coconut sweet making/puffed rice thingy making village while running the gauntlet of postcard sellers and everything else sellers. After tea and a prolonged opportunity to purchase the items we had seen produced it was back on the boat to have a look at a very cool floating vege market. It was pretty amazing to see that all the things you see on the movies are for real. Vietnam outside of the main cities doesn't seem to have changed in hundreds of years (give or take the postcards and the fact that the old wood boats now have outboards on the ends!).

Then it was on to the Mekong proper which is - to put it mildly - fucking massive! Crossing from one side to the other took about 40 minutes but was pretty mindblowing to do. The rivers I know come in smaller packages.

Lunch at a restaurant up one of the tributaries was allright but the monkey chained to a tree at the back for our benefit was not. Nor was the classical Vietnamese music performance given by a woman who worked there with her band. Full points for angst-ridden enthusiasm but I can now see why the overal effect has been compared to cats being strangled.

Back on to the boat after lunch and to the waiting tour bus. A quick whip around a local market and then home made for an exceptionally good way to spend $7 US and a good chance to check out the world outside the HCMC chaos.

My heart will go on....

Music and mobility seem to go together here, just like the bows of ships and the impulse to stand on the railing and spread out your arms.

Highlights include the taxis that play 'happy birthday' as they reverse at you at full speed, the people on push bikes who inexplicably cycle up and down the road clacking some sort of jingly thing, and the bloke who pushes a tall speaker up and down the road blasting out 'my heart will go on' for no apparent reason.

I wondered if it might be a mobile karaoke thingy but I can't see a microphone - a little mystery for me to ponder at night as I lie in bed listening to it wafting through the window :-)


***BREAKING NEWS: It is the next day, I have just stopped the 'My heart will go on' man in the street and asked him what the hell he does for a living. Turns out that fact is even weirder than fiction, the music blaring tall speaker is actually a pay per use mobile height and weight machine...with added music as a bonus. So there you go, measure your height and weight on the street while listening to Celine Dion. Perhaps 'my heart will go on' is some sort of cryptic heart disease message...?

Wheeeeeeee!

So this morning I woke up after 11 hours of what I will generously call sleep. The rock hard bed and brick for pillow were fine but the extremely busy 24/7 street below my window took a little getting used to. Popped into my local dodgy street phramacy first thing and the woman laughed when I asked for earplugs - I suspect it might be a frequent foreigner request.

As my friendly cyclo man was nowhere to be seen (millions of others were of course but I am a loyal customer) I bade farewell to my insurance and hailed (or agreed to be hailed by) a 'Honda Om' motorcycle taxi, which in fact is usually just a bloke who fancies earning some extra cash with his bike. Negotiated a reasonable foreigner rip off price for our 7km journey to the Cholon china town markets and off we went. Not only was it not as scary as I thought it would be (remember that we are talking about literally hundreds of bikes on any one street at any time with no road rules to speak of), it was actually a lot of fun, give or take the layer of grime I was covered in at the end of it).

I'm not sure what overtakes tourists when they're off their home patch but riding pillion on a motorbike in insane conditions with no helmet while wearing shorts and jandals seemed feasible. That said, I will make the distinction between riding a motorbike in Samui, which I wouldn't dream of, and riding in HCMC. The difference (apart from the squillions more bikes in HCMC) is that the traffic never gets above 30/35kph in Saigon whereas in Samui it's what you can get away with. I know perfectly well that your head will split just as easily at 35kph as it will at 100kph but it somehow feels different. Riding in HCMC seems to be more an ongoing negotiation between reasonably civil madmen whereas Saumi is a suicide mission. When I come back here for a few months I may even considering riding myself (WITH helmet and appropriate safety gear), but we'll see about that when I get to it.

Anyway, enough of that. Saigon is a lot of fun. Am just about to book a ridiculously cheap tour to check out the Cu Chi tunnels (aka an e.g of exactly how the Viet Cong kicked the US's ass) and the temple of some mad religious sect or another for tomorrow so I'd better go do that - quite fun being an unadulterated tourist for a few days.

Jetlag, pedal power and hallucinations of pickled babies.

I left England, land of the uninspiring everything what I think was this mornimg, although I've had 2 of those in the last 18 hours as I am now in Vietnam and jetlagged out of my skull.

I think that is how, within 1/2 an hour of making it through the 2 hour long queue at Ho Chi Minh airport and not getting tooooo badly ripped off on the taxi on the way to the guest house (the first offer was $15 US to which I laughed and took my bag back - his next offer was $6 US which I couldn't be bothered haggling down), I found myself perched on a cyclo, weaving through insane Vietnamese traffic with scooters and cars galore and looking at pickled babies.

OK, let me start again. After the taxi ride I got to the guest house which is a leetle dodgy but clean and perfectly acceptable (the dodgyness is mostly only cos of the large centre tile in between the beds which is a modern soft-porn picture (didn't know that the porn industry was expanding into tiling but there you go). The bed is clean, it has aircon and a shower/toilet, costs $9US a night and the only gecko i've seen so far was squished in the sliding shower door. More than any girl could possibly want.

Within half an hour of arriving I was walking round the streets. I literally got about 10 metres down the road before Dalat the cyclo driver pounced and charmed me into hiring him for what turned into the afternoon (funny how that happens). Dalat has an entire book of references from clients (of which I am now one) but it was the lady from Timaru who clinched it for me!

We spent three hours (at the princely sum of $2 US an hour) with him pedalling me round HCMC, dropping me off at attractions, waiting for me and carrying on. My role in this was to dutifully go into the attraction I had been dropped at, look at it and resume my task of looking like a tubby jetlagged western idiot in a cyclo. I think I held my end of the bargain up rather well.

It was V. weird going through massive roundabouts with cars and motorbikes flying past and us just sort of cruising - as a normally paranoid backseat driver of the worst kind it was bizarre not to feel scared at all. But if I thought that was weird, the 1st stop was a doozy. Dalat dropped me off at the war remnants museum (formerly known as the american war atrocities museum or some other equally neutral name). The museum starts you off gentle with photos and historical info then gets progressively more stressful and before you know it you walk around a corner and find yourself face to face with 3 jars containing pickled babies with agent orange deformities sort of tucked into a corner of the room. I wondered, nay hoped, that it was the jetlag kicking in early but instead had to get all serious and emotional for a while before hopping back on my magical mystery cyclo tour.

Next stop was the history museum which was presented lots of very funky ancient cambodian carvings and 3 more preserved bodies! I was starting to get worried about the emerging trend but the jade pagoda temple (next on the list) was just amazing - a working inner city temple with people in suits turning up and praying and burning incense, and a huge moat that is chokka full of turtles that people bring to 'set free' - part of the monks' job is to look after them.

After that we were back where we started, except that we stopped at Dalat's local haunt and had a drink on the street on the traditional Vietnamese children's plastic tables with his mate Ton who is a motorbike taxi man and whose services I may well use in the next few days as well. I shared a drink with them (not without noting that my kid's seat had had another one surreptitiously added for strength!), added a glowing reference to Dalat's book (a 3 hour tour for $7 US including drinks and tip!) and staggered back to my funny old hotel, not a bad start to my week in HCMC at all!

Public transport that goes 'brmmmmmmm'

Have been enjoying trying out some new forms of public transport while in Samui.

Our favourite so far is the equivalent of the local bus service which involves utes with large open-ended hutches on the tray. You just hop onto the back to head to wherever you fancy. There is a buzzer fitted into the ceiling that you press when you want to get off and you just relax, sitting in the tray of the ute with the wind in your hair, admiring the hand-beaten metal work and paintings that decorate the passenger area.

On an island that is 21x25kms total there aren't too many places to go so generally you're on the main ring road, which gives you lots of opportunities to watch the myriad motorcyclists with a death wish hurtling along. It's funny how when people are on holiday they do things they wouldn't dream of at home. So you see Swedes, Fins, Brits etc hooning around on scooters with no helmets and safety clothing that consists of a pair of shorts and jandals (make that thongs or flip flops if you're not from NZ). Clearly death and injury are not concerns when you're on holiday.

The road rules in Samui involves flooring it until you're behind a car or motorbike, at which time you toot twice and swing round them into the oncoming traffic and then duck back in. Woe betide the motorcycle or dog that gets in your way while doing this.

I guess i've lead a sheltered life until now - but I have to admit that seeing entire families on scooters or girls riding sidesaddle still amazes me. Saw a pair of girls today with the one on the back (riding sidesaddle) clearly in charge of indicating and doing so beautifully by pointing her bottle of Singha beer in the approximate direction that they were heading. Another pair were seen at about 80kph with the passenger holding a large silver fish, sort of casually hanging down near the tyres.

Also gave in to tourist temptation today and did an elephant 'trek' (I use inverted commas because 1/2 an hour can hardly be called a trek). Pretty sure the aim is to make the tourists as uncomfortable as possible, heading up exceptionally steep hills and over rocky terrain but I still loved it - albeit silently being grateful for the rope 'seatbelt' that we were tied in with! Any form of transport that runs on bananas and cleans itself has got to be good!

Anyhoo, enough rabbiting on - am off to London tomorrow night where the transport will no doubt be much less exciting and MUCH more expensive - ciao!

Your correspondent decides to test some airborne public transport.

Have decided to undertake a trip that involves hanging around at Bangkok airport in transit for as much time as possible in a 3 week period. The itinerary is Melbourne-Koh Samui (via Bangkok), Koh Samui-London (via Bangkok), London-Vietnam (via Bangkok) and Vietnam-Melbourne...you guessed it, via Bangkok. Bangkok airport is not one of the world's most enticing places and is designed like a rabbit warren...but more of that later.

The flight from Melbourne was reasonably uneventful save for a few highlights which included a harassed mother of 3 at melbourne airport waiting to board that 1.15am flight telling her eldest, who was doing the classic 4 year old 'and then what?' question routine: 'and then you'll get on the plane and sleep for 9 hours without waking up'.

Had the pleasure of meeting the Thai airways air cabin crew on my first Thai airways flight - was especially charmed by the older women who bore haircuts with dead straight fringes that honestly made them look like Vulcans.

So i'm blogging from Koh Samui, Thailand which is a bloody marvellous bit of the world. Samui is on the cusp of surrendering completely to tourism and tackiness but for now, it's just what the doctor ordered. That said, the airport is like some surreal Thai-Disneyland. In a neat bit of monopolistic wangling Bangkok Airways also owns and operates Koh Samui airport - hence they can do what the hell they want with it and also decide who gets to play in their sandpit.

You arrive and get decanted from your plane into disneyland-type tuk tuks that you all sit on looking like jetlagged idiots and get driven about 100 metres to the 'customs area' (aka a large open sided hut - albeit a very classy one) with two rather ineffectual fans lazily swinging around on the ceiling and a lone customs officer in full military regalia who does the most vigorous triplicate passport/visa stamping routine I have ever witnessed), all a reasonably surreal way to start your trip. It was rush hour when I arrived early on a Saturday morning, and the massive queue of 8 people ahead of us meant that our tuk tuk load of people got ushered to wooden seats around the sides while we waited for the jam to clear.

And now I am working hard at shopping, basking on the beach, having daily massages (1 hour for $7 AUD thank you very much!), practising my seriously crap bargaining skills and contemplating trying a 'fried bug' (grasshopper is rather good I hear) from the street vendor near our bungalow. I LOVE being bourgeois!

Over and out.

All priorities are relative.

Sometimes body language is all you need.

I was at the Flinders Street train station and felt the call of nature, so much so that I found myself contemplating the dreaded train station toilets. No matter where you go in the world, they're all the same. It could be the Paris Metro, the London Tube or somewhere in New Delhi, Cairo or New York - regardless of location or wealth, train station toilets all maintain the same exacting standards of putrid filth and dodgyness.

I remember when I was a kid in Noo Zulland, visiting my dad in Auckland. I was waiting to take the train back to my home town and needed the loo. The Auckland train station is in a beautful old building but beauty or no, the trail of blood leading down to the women's toilets convinced me that I could just cross my legs and wait.

Fast-forward a dozen or so years to today and my present dilemma. I thought I could hold on but the accursed train was even later than it usually is (thanks Connex!) so, after much hopping around, I finally gave in and strode purposefully towards the toilets. I had just reached the door to the toilets when a stream of five women ran past me in the other direction, holding handkerchiefs, bags, shirtsleeves or whatever came to hand to their noses.

It's funny how every urgent task is, at the end of the day, relative to your current situation. I may have been desperate for the toilet but in that moment I realised that yes, i could wait just that little bit longer. I'm sure there's a moral in there somewhere.

More acolytes for my nerdy cause....

Everyone's getting in on the tramspotting game! :-)

Fridays will do that to you.

It is the time of year when I notice that my various parts are that much rounder or nearer to the ground. I would blame gravity or other scientific anomalies but the fact that I attended nine xmas lunches (but no dinners for some reason) this year MIGHT have something to do with it.

Anyhoo, that's the reason why I was on the late afternoon train last Friday - heading out to a new recreation centre to begin atoning for my deadly xmas sins (gluttony mostly but i'm sure sloth snuck in there somewhere as well) by playing a few rounds of badminton with some equally guilty mates.

We pulled up to the station that I was getting off at and a super laid-back ocker voice comes over the intercomm saying "don't try to get off just yet ladies and gentleman, we're going to back the train up a tad as I appear to have missed the platform by a smidge". Sure enough, the train proceeds to reverse (I didn't know they could do that actually) with us pissing ourselves laughing inside and the people standing on the platform waiting to board looking rather bemused.

The train stops and the voice comes back through the intercom saying "there, now that's better, have a great weekend!"

And sure enough, I did.

Feeling warm and fuzzy on the #57 tram

Have I mentioned that I like trams?

They rock!

Take today's trip into the city for example. Waiting at my stop with an Asian woman and her young daughter. As the tram pulls up the Aussie driver spots the woman and her daughter and starts waving to the girl. As they get on he proudly says hello in their language and they exchange xmas greetings.

I settle into my seat and watch the hijab-wearing West African woman search in her purse for coins for the fascist coins-only ticket vending machine. She realises she only has a $5 note and starts to panic at which point an elderly Australian woman taps her on arm and points to the old Chinese man who has noticed and is holding out $5 worth of coins. She accepts with a lovely smile, sitting down and then shuffling over to make space as a young pregnant woman gets on.

At the next stop an 'Aussie working bloke' gets on the tram carrying approximately 3 cubic tons of scrap metal, perfect for gouging eyes and piercing lungs when the tram stops suddenly. The driver, having had no response to his 'you can't get on with that mate' warning, comes barreling down the tram and an almighty altercation ensues, with the exceedingly grumpy bloke getting back off after the driver stood his ground with the silent support of the whole tram.

We carry on and the tram gets progressively fuller as more and more xmas shoppers get on, heading towards the city. An elderly woman gets on and gratefully accepts my seat. She rewards me with an entertaining evesdropping conversation with the young pregnant woman about her grandchildren, their ages, schooling, plans for the future etc.

I reluctantly get off at my stop, amply reminded why it is that I love trams.

Ashley who?

"So I was sitting on the train right? And these 3 kids were sitting behind me and one of them was like SUCH a try hard!"

Y'know, one of those girls who has just just got her slappa L-plates and is revelling in the fact that she's a grownup girl now and super proud of her newfound sexual prowess (rrrrroawwwww!). There were 3 of them sitting there but she was the only audible one, sort of excitedly talking and being all grownup, dishing the dirt on exes ("He can't get it up!") and the various bitches who had crossed her ("Just cos' I slept with her boyfriend she gets all seppo!")

A highlight for me was an exchange between the guy she was sitting with where he asked "Ashley who?" and she replied, "You know, the one who looks like me who gave you head who you kissed right after! Remember? I found out and asked you 'how's the sperm?' [cue: maniacal self-satisfied cackling]"

Nothing like a good sperm joke to end the day :-)

Boogie Mamma!

I usually take the train home in the evenings around 7pm - a commuting time now reknowned for its smiling faces and good vibes. A couple of weeks ago though, my partner told me about a passenger he had seen, who sounded like just the solution. Last night I had the pleasure of sharing his company.

I boarded the carriage and found to my delight that a man in workman-type clothes was playing blues on his harmonica - not busking for money mind you - just playing for the love of it. He looked maybe one baguette short of a gourmet picnic but boy could he play.

Initially it was short set-pieces of a few chords (I suspect designed for serenading the passengers or simply announcing his presence) as people boarded at each station. As we pulled away from the city and the train got faster between stops the pieces became longer and more vigorous, incorporating foot stamping and tapping the harmonica case against the back of a seat. At the end of one particularly vigorous piece he yelled out 'Boogie Mamma!' All songs were timed to last the distance between stops so the longer you stayed on, the longer the concert.

I was sitting immediately behind him, facing in the other direction, and it was great to watch all these jaded commuters discretely smiling and looking appreciative (after the initial WTF?! - type response of course), although no one clapped or let on that they did like it.

As I reluctantly got off at my station, I murmured "Have a good night mate" to him (in my best pseudo-ocker accent - notice the cunning placement of the 'mate' for authentic effect). The result was a broad grin and a "You too, merry xmas" from the Boogie Man. Brightened up my journey no end and left me feeling rather warm and fuzzy and just a wee bit seasonal (but don't tell anyone).

Lost in translation?

Chilling out on my usual 10.14am train ride into the city (hardworking student-type that I am) and find myself spending most of the journey staring at a woman's chest.

Now this is not really typical behaviour on my part (honest!) but the chest in question belonged to a middle-aged Vietnamese woman who was dressed in the standard 'tidy-casual mother' attire: exactly the right length blue jeans, black undershirt with black jacket over the top and gold 'Mum Jewellery TM'.

I was staring because the black shirt under the black jacket appeared to be one of those blokey humour t-shirts. You know the kind, "my other car is a porsche', 'if you can read this the bitch fell off' ad infinitum titter titter titter. This one read 'So you're a feminist? How CUTE!'. What's more, the word 'cute' was in those fabulous pink sequin thingys that mums of a certain age are so fond of. Have to admit that it looked a little incongrous emblazoned on the chest of this particular lady but there you go, I guess there's a misogynist (or poor interpreter?) in us all.

no hoWARd

The central train station had a big fire yesterday morning that resulted in us being kicked out a station early and all being late to our respective destinations.

Subsequently, I took the tram home last night, after another marathon essay marking session at uni.

A bloke got on and sat down opposite me, conveniently burying his head in a book, allowing me to stare at him properly for the bulk of the trip (yes, I am the annoying person that does that :-)

He was middle aged, with a colossal multicoloured goatee (if you can call it that - maybe a narrow beard would be a better description) and beautiful plastic multicoloured rings in his ears and nose (I assume they were UV reflective or something), with a large lumberjack type jacket (with a 'save the...' something or another patch on the back), accessorised by a series of badges/pins.

The first badge, inevitably, had a cross through the word homophobia, the second had 'no hoWARd' on it (very clever use of capitalisation for seditious effect) and I can't remember the other one. To top it all off, there was a gorgeous large red woman's handbag with a stylised stick person throwing a nazi swastika into a rubbish bin (culture jamming all the way baby!).

The problem was, that for all this, I could only sit there thinking how much he looked - sans goatee - like a middle aged banker. I guess some people are suited to the non-conformist look and some aren't, which probably implies something about my perspective on conformation in the first place.

Al KeyDa train.

Pulling away from my local station this morning heading towards the city. Everyone in the carriage looks up as this bloke of indeterminate arab origin (almost definitely a terrorist ;-) runs up to the door that has just closed, punches it angrily and then uses some sharp metal object or another to scour the side of the carriage as it passes, making an incredible noise.

Now i've heard of people 'keying' cars, but train carriages? That's taking it to a whole new level!

Tram drivers say the darndest things.

There are only so many ways to entertain yourself when you're stuck in a little metal cage driving a tram that doesn't really need driving, give or take breakneck acceleration and sudden braking. Every now and then you strike a driver who clearly aspires to greater things (often a career in standup comedy).

On a Sunday on the way to badminton it became pretty apparent that I had a live one when the driver used the intercom to announce each stop in an appropriate style. Highlights included "Next stop, exhibition centre and a whole load of trams on my right" and (boxing promoter style), "Crowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwn CASINO!!!".

Had another one a few days later who displayed a classic example of the sardonic black humour peculiar to trammies. We were stopped at the lights one stop before the end of the tram route and the driver opens the doors to chat to one of his mates. As they're standing there chatting a woman tries to get off, only to be stopped by the ocker trammie saying "Nah, nah nah, you can't get off there. The paperwork's too much". Full points for innovative enforcement of the rules though.