www.nickhodge.com

Waringah Free­way out of sunny Sydney


Nick read­ing Qantas Club, Sydney


Emmah and Judith wait­ing in Qantas Club


Doing a Jordan: one bag for this Trip


Mat­ing Sony-Ericssons


Lee Gale


Craig Tegel, Hotel Lobby Bar, Sheraton


Arrival Maori sculp­ture, Auck­land Inter­na­tional Air­port


Depar­ture gate, Sydney for QF49 to Auck­land


Maori icon­o­graphy, Sheraton Lobby Bar


Best record store in the world: Real Groovy Records, Auck­land


Skytower, Auck­land


Bridge­work over Auck­land


On the Free­way return­ing to Auck­land


Luke the new dad and Emmah


Stuck in a meet­ing room, look­ing furt­ively west­wards from Auck­land


Karanga­hape Road. Shor­ted to K-Road. I won­der why


Judith, Emmah, Nick, Two Dells and an IBM. Work­ing in the Qantas Club


Judith, Emmah: retail ther­apy Auck­land Inter­na­tional Air­port. I pur­chased noth­ing


Leav­ing Auck­land

Monday, 26^th April, 2004

We pass Horton-cum-Studley (yes, that is the name of a town here!) on our way to the birth­place of all MINIs, the BMW/MINI fact­ory in Oxford.

The plant is massive, and we gather inside the Inform­a­tion Centre for our tour. To obtain a tour, you have to write to the plant request­ing a slot in one of the tour groups. We sent our request in Novem­ber 2003. As there was a new MINI to be announced earlier this year, plant tours were closed until early April — and we’re finally here!

Inside the centre, there are vari­ous fam­ous MINIs on dis­play: Aus­tin Power’s MINI from Gold­mem­ber (say with a Michael Caine Cock­ney accent: “It’s not the size, it’s how you use it.”), three MINIs from the more recent “Italian Job”, a MINI from the BMW/MINI Celebrity Chal­lenge at the Mel­bourne Grand Prix, and a plain MINI Cooper S.

John Strange is our tour leader: he retired 3 years ago as a Shift super­visor (and well known amongst the cur­rent staff, it seems) and seems to moon­light from his pen­sion by tak­ing people around the plant. In the brief­ing prior to the tour, John tries his brand of dry humour on some Amer­ic­ans and stu­dents. Sadly, the Hodge fam­ily seem to be the only ones laugh­ing. Evid­ently, Heads-up-Display is on the draw­ing board for a future MINI. No pho­tos in the plant, includ­ing a ban on Bluetooth being enabled, and cam­eras in phones (accord­ing to the policy doc­u­ment stick on the entry door to the plant)

Stat­ist­ics: 3500 MINIs per week are made by 4500 people and 230 robots. In 2003, 174,000 MINIs were made at this plant, and every MINI leav­ing has an owner wait­ing. 10% are wet-tested and road tested. 10 MINIs each month are taken on a full QA cycle. 40,000 MINIs are sold in the UK; 10,000 France; 20,000 Italy.

We first see the “Body in White” plant, where the pre-pressed alu­minium (pressed else­where in Eng­land from 0.8mm metal from Hol­land) is res­ist­ance wel­ded (press together, forge then weld accord­ing to John) together by 230 robots. It doesn’t take too long for you to see the MINI come together from many parts. We also see our first Cab­ri­olet (to be named Con­vert­able for the US mar­ket) ready for the paint shop. Even is MINI obsessed fam­ily learn new things look­ing at how these beast­ies are put together.

The paint shop is not a part of the tour as it is a lint-free environment.

Each MINI going out of the paint shop has an owner. From this point, there are 2500 items that have to be placed into the MINI to cus­tom­ise it for the indi­vidual owner. No two MINIs are alike! On the line, from the bar­code and the transpon­der (placed at the front where the MINI badge goes) fol­lows the MINI through its assembly to exit/testing.

Next stop is the Assembly plant. Here, the MINIs are passed through three lines of final assembly: from wir­ing looms, to engines (mar­riage its called) tires, doors, lights etc. There are more people here doing the assembly work. Here we see some new “Cab­ri­olets” on the line. All three were burnt orange. A very strange col­our. It must look bet­ter out­side than inside.

Ter­min­o­logy: the work­ers are called “Asso­ci­ates” (mod­ern day PC comes to vehicu­lar assembly) and the robots that assist by lift­ing are called “Assistors”.

Once out of the Assembly area, the new MINI is driven to the test area where its gets it “MOT” (Min­istry of Trans­port test in the UK: essen­tially, mak­ing sure that everything works)

Car­o­lyn, the law stu­dent from Oxford who works here part time, shows us her favour­ite part of the assembly: the install­a­tion of the wir­ing loom. This takes many people two or three steps on the line to fully install; its like the cent­ral nervous sys­tem of the car.

Sadly leav­ing the MINI fact­ory, we drive back to Heath­row to return our clunker to board BA25 to Hong Kong. Leave 30minutes late across Ger­many, Poland, Rus­sia and China to land at Hong Kong ontime.

Brit­ish Air­ways First Class. 9 seats on this 747, of which 5 are occu­pied. Each of the 5 occu­pants change out of their day clothes into the funny First Class prisoner’s out­fit prior to depar­ture. After take off, the crew dili­gently hook up the vel­veteen rope that sep­ar­ates us Busi­ness Class out­casts from passing acci­dently into the realms of First Class para­dise. This rope hinders the poor crew more than pas­sen­gers as they pass through the cabin.

The announce­ment tells us to shut off our “games and word pro­cessors”. Time to update the script, BA!

Sunday, 25^th April, 2004

Arrive at Stan­stead from Rome, and walk the 2kms to the Avis car lot. Avril is driv­ing from Stan­stead to Kensignton to pickup our lug­gage before we head out to Oxford.

Con­nect­ing our “Ms” to our “As” becomes import­ant as we nav­ig­ate into the centre of Lon­don. We hit Not­ting Hill, near Por­to­bello Road and we know exactly where we are. An illegal (?) U-turn, and we are there.

Col­lec­tion our thoughts, bag­gage and some more Marks and Sparks Undies and we are off.

Nick drives the “A4” to “M4” to “M25” to “M40” to “A34” are we find the hotel, Hol­i­day Inn Oxford. So far, the best hotel we have stayed at: very new. In the middle of nowhere.

What is it about UK drivers? Even though the speed limit is 70mph, and I am doing 85mph, there are Mer­cedes and Audis speed past doing more than 100mph! You would think you are on the autobahn.

Sat­urday, 10^th April, 2004

I peeled off from the main party today, out and about by myself.

Firstly, off to the Tate Gal­lery of Mod­ern Art. Massive build­ing. Why do I always feel unworthy vis­it­ing any art gal­lery? This feel­ing of inferi­or­ity stems from child­hood, un-art edu­cated school­ing I am sure. See a Monet (Water Lil­lies), Dali and some War­hols. It’s inter­est­ing to see the “people” dens­ity in these pop­u­lar exhib­its com­pared to the mod­ern “install­a­tion” and more con­cep­tual art pieces on display.

Quick ride on the Jubilee line to see Abbey Road stu­dios (to say I have been there!), where even the cafe at the nearby Under­ground sta­tion is a tour­ist trap: pur­chase any­thing Beatles related here. I stoop to pick­ing up a souvenir. My weak­ness: Fridge mag­nets. Back down into Lon­don to Green Park. Its not in my Lonely Planet guide, so I am not sure exactly where this is. Thank­fully, its near the Ritz and a Star­bucks (for­got my cof­fee this morn­ing: nor­mally we have been going to a little French patis­sere near where we are stay­ing) — have cof­fee with some Brit­ish Trans­port Police, illeg­ally parked out­side. Look on the Ritz.

Walk through the park to Buck­ing­ham Palace, then through Admir­al­ity Arch to White­hall. This whole area smells like horse dung. Must be an inex­pens­ive neighbourhood.

The fur­ther down White­hall you go, the cheaper the souven­irs are. Nearly get run over get­ting around the tour­ists tak­ing pho­tos of the Guards. Go past the heav­ily guarded Down­ing Street. Guarded even though Tony Blair and fam­ily are in Ber­muda (28 pounds per day, evid­ently), and he actu­ally has so many chil­dren, he has to live in No 11, not No 10 Down­ing Street.

Through Tra­fal­gar Square (don’t feed the pigeons accord­ing to the Mayor of Lon­don), to Pic­ca­dilly Cir­cus (any­thing with Cir­cus in the name deftly describes the mass of people) to Tot­ten­ham Court Road to view the Computer/Electronic stores. Expens­ive: dir­ectly due to the 17% VAT here in the UK. Back via Oxford Cir­cus, Under­ground to Not­ting Hill Gate.

Down Port­a­bello Road, past George Orwell’s house to see a part of the street mar­ket. Masses of people here, a look­ing at expens­ive trinkets to lug to their homes.

Fri­day, 09^th April, 2004

Quick visit the the Nat­ural His­tory Museum: another sell-out to inter­act­ive musueum dis­plays. In an attempt to be a “teach­ing” museum, the NHM has many out-dated (now museum pieces!) dis­plays. Includ­ing a rather rude dis­play show­ing where babies come from. There is noth­ing left out here! Vic­torian era prudes would not be happy.

The Lon­don Trans­port Museum, in the square where you will also find Cov­ent Garden Mar­kets (isn’t the concept of a mar­ket that there are small stall hold­ers? In this mar­ket, the ‘brand names’ have taken over: Gap, Cafe Nero etc!) The museum is a trainspotter’s para­dise. And bus spot­ters, too. Yes there is such a breed. Do a google search and be very afraid!

Drive your own under­ground train, and see the var­ied his­tory of trans­port in Lon­don. The most interest part of the museum is the dis­play show­ing the evol­u­tion of the fam­ous Lon­don Under­ground maps. A Mr. Henry (Harry) Beck designed these maps, now copied by all rail/underground sys­tems. He first draf­ted the ori­ginal design in 1931. Man­age­ment rejec­ted the maps, yet when tri­alled to great acclaim: they were adop­ted. The maps are fam­ous in the inform­a­tion design space. His last map was in 1960.

The final museum for today is the Museum of Lon­don. A great visit as it takes you through the his­tory of the Lon­don area from 500,000 BC to the turn of the 20^th cen­tury. It seems that they leave the 20^th Cen­tury to other museums. The Roman and Vic­torian exhibit is extraordin­ary. As it takes you through time, it is very well organ­ised. No pho­tos per­mit­ted inside. Mini count = 16

Thursday, 08^th April, 2004

If you are col­ourblind, you are prob­ably going to get lost in Lon­don. The Under­ground relies on colours.

Future pop-culture heads up: Katie Melua and rolled up cuffs on jeans.

This morn­ing, Liam and I jump on the new attrac­tion in Lon­don: the Lon­don Eye. Or its cor­rect name, the Brit­ish Air­ways Lon­don Eye. Basic­ally, you jump into a per­spex pod that takes you up >400 feet into the air next to the Thames in a fer­ris wheel-like con­trap­tion — where you look out upon Lon­don. Great for tak­ing photos.

On the tour, we see “Bomber” Har­ris, the head of Bomber com­mand in front of the RAF chapel — sig­ni­fic­antly pock-marked by bomb dam­age from WW2. This is oppos­ite the Aus­tralian High Commission.

Wed­nes­day, 07^th April, 2004

The big day for Liam: The Imper­ial War Museum. We had waited this long to ensure that we could see the new D-Day exhibit.

Before we pro­gress, its a quick stop in Kens­ing­ton High Street where Avril sees Mary Elisa­beth Mas­trant­o­nio, the act­ress. In M&S.

Housed in the old Bed­lam Insane Asylum, the War museum is a test­a­ment to the insan­ity of war. Hav­ing seen Monty’s lav­ish cara­van of trucks at Dux­ford, it’s inter­est­ing to note the con­tin­ued glor­i­fic­a­tion of Monty here at the War Museum. The mil­it­ary his­tor­i­ans of today ques­tion the num­ber of cas­u­al­ties at El Alamien, and his dubi­ous ventures/lack of speed in France. Yet here he is a hero.

The D-Day exhibit is great: see­ing ori­ginal doc­u­ments, note­books and stor­ies. There are two telling dis­plays: one a let­ter to a sol­dier that stops mid-sentence: the writer found out that the sol­dier was miss­ing, pre­sumed dead. The second a note­book from a mil­it­ary chap­lain detail­ing graves of dead sol­diers. Brings home the reality.

The cock­pit of a lone Avro Lan­caster sits upstairs. Why I say lone as it is F-for-Freddie from 467 Squad­ron: an Aus­tralian con­ti­gent in the RAF Bomber com­mand. You look inside, won­der­ing what Aus­trali­ans sat in this plane, and flew over Germany.

In the after­noon, we grab one of those Lon­don Tour buses: get on/off, audio tour­guides. See the Temple of Mith­ras, a 2000 year old Roman temple now in the midst of the fin­an­cial heart of the City of Lon­don. Also, saw a Thai res­taur­ant. Maybe the only one in Lon­don. Every second store in Sydney is a Thai restaurant.

We are stay­ing in the dip­lo­matic centre of Lon­don it seems. We are very close to the fam­ous Ira­nian embas­say: the sight of a fam­ous attempt at res­cuing host­ages by the SAS in a few dec­ades ago. A down­side to liv­ing in the dip­lo­matic heart is that there are mad drivers on the road, and with dip­lo­matic immunity, you are liable to get run over with impun­ity. Mini count = 16

Tues­day, 06^th April, 2004

Today Liam and I split from the main party and vis­ited the Tower of Lon­don. Prob­ably the most mis­named exhibit in Lon­don, there is no real tower here, unless you count the 1000 year old White Tower Castle in three levels. Built for the King of the time, it is now in the centre of a com­plex where the pen­ul­tim­ate height (Harrod’s wins, by the way) of flee­cing tour­ists exists. The ori­ginal build­ers even used the walls of Roman Londinium to make this ‘castle’.

OK, so I am a repub­lican. Vis­it­ing the armour of King Henry VIII doesn’t impress me much, even if he was attempt­ing to impress the ladies with his large cod­piece. Must’ve worked as he was mar­ried 6 times; after the first behead­ing, they kept com­ing back!

The Coron­a­tion Jew­els dis­play isn’t worth the 20 minute queue. There are 5 “hold­ing rooms” where you see video of Queen Eliza­beth II’s coron­a­tion; the Coron­a­tion Jew­ellery is inside a vault, guarded by an old geezer without weaponry. The Coron­a­tion Spoon is the only impress­ive piece at 8 cen­tur­ies old. We didn’t see the Coron­a­tion bazooka or Coron­a­tion Marks-and-Sparks under­wear. We did see, how­ever, the dia­mond taken from India, once owned by the guy that owned the Taj Mahal, and not returned to India: even though QEII is no longer Empress of India. Oh, and there is no pho­to­graphy of the Coron­a­tion jewellery.

Whilst you are wait­ing to see the din­ner plates in the Coron­a­tion Jew­ellery area, there are two small guns sit­ting out­side in the rain. For those inter­ested, upon read­ing the inscrip­tion you see that they were cap­tured from the French at Water­loo. His­tory is every­where here. If you need to go to the “loo”, the 2003 award win­ning loo sits behind this build­ing. Now that’s impressive.

Over the Tower Bridge, in the rain, to HMS Bel­fast. This is a WWII Cruiser (not des­troyer, people) that you can essen­tially crawl all around on. Jump on the Bofors guns, installed post WWII, and attempt to shoot at the office build­ings nearby.

What is inter­est­ing are the Under­ground sta­tions. The Glouster Road sta­tion has been restored, and is an impress­ive test­a­ment to Victorian/Edwardian era over­in­dul­gence in the world’s richest city at the time. The new West­min­ster Under­ground is a vast cav­ern that houses a stop on the new Jubilee line. Com­par­ing this to the old Circle/District lines — shows how far trans­port has come in recent years.

So, today has been 4 Lon­don attrac­tions in one day: Tower of Lon­don, Tower Bridge, HMS Bel­fast and the Lon­don Rain. Mini count 18.

Monday, 05^th April, 2004

Walk: 10 minutes. Under­ground: wait 5 minutes, travel 25 minutes. Train: wait 5 minutes, travel 45 minutes. Bus: wait 45 minutes, travel 55 minutes. Total cost: 67 pounds. Now at Dux­ford Imper­ial War Museum; home of many, many planes.

Metro, a free com­muter news­pa­per, talks about the real royal fam­ily of the UK: Vic­toria and David Beck­ham; are in the midst of a major mar­ital crisis as DB has cheated on Vic. Major front page crisis here.

After pur­chas­ing the train tick­ets using a touch screen, jump­ing on the said train on plat­form 9a, we’re off and away. People are work­ing whilst trav­el­ling at 160 km/hr; with no “wait­ing” for 20 minutes in ascent and des­cent as per fly­ing. What is sim­ilar, how­ever, is the change in air­pres­sure when going through tun­nels, or when a train is passing at 320 km/hr (rel­at­ive) within cms.

At Cam­bridge (named as there is a bridge over a river called Cam. OK, now I get it) we jump on a C7 bus to Dux­ford. As the bus driver states: we stop at every vil­lage and blade of grass on the way through. Now I can see why the Brit­ish up and conquered the world for 300 years. They simply got bored with the cli­mate and the bor­ing drudgery of small towns.

At Dux­ford, its cold and rain­ing on and off. At least its warm when the sun comes out. An ex-RAF and USAAF base dur­ing WW2, this is now a part of the Imper­ial War Museum chain: and there are many planes here to look at and touch inside 5 hangars. Touch­ing his­tory is important.

A poignant part of the museum is a series of glass pan­els on the entrance to the Amer­ican Air Museum in Bri­tain. It con­tains 21 planes of dif­fer­ing vin­tages: includ­ing B17s to B52s. The glass pan­els show a small pic­ture rep­res­ent­ing each US plane shot down dur­ing WW2 that flew from Bri­tain. 7,062 planes, and over 30,000 US air­man lost their lives. It changes the whole mood of this part of the museum.

Car­rol talks to us as we leave the Land Forces part of the museum: there is a spe­cial dis­play where you are exit­ing a land­ing craft onto Nor­mandy. The sound track is dir­ectly lif­ted from “Sav­ing Private Ryan”. Vari­ous pieces from this dis­play were loaned to/from “Band of Broth­ers” and “Sav­ing Private Ryan”. You even get to really touch, feel and lift a Thompson sub­ma­chine gun and a 303 rifle. That was way cool.

The Even­ing Stand­ard details that David Beck­ham wants to repair his mar­riage. Oh, what a busy news day here in the UK.

Return trip home: Bus: wait 5 minutes, travel 45 minutes. Train: wait 1 minute, travel 45 minutes. Under­ground: wait 3 minutes, travel 25 minutes. Home. No-one checked we had pur­chased tick­ets for the Cam­bridge train. Trust­worthy place, this.

Count for the day: 19 MINIs, 3 golf courses and 1 rabbit.

Sunday, 04^th April, 2004

It’s obvi­ous once you get onto the Under­ground on a Sunday morn­ing, that only tour­ists get up this early on Sundays in Lon­don. We’re off to Madam Tousaud’s on Baker Street. Its only 6 Under­ground stops from High Street Kens­ing­ton, and after listen­ing to many European lan­guages in the line — we are in. A busker, which we find out later is illegal, attempts to enter­tain over the din of the under­ground train and announce­ments. “Mind the Gap” at Great Port­land Street.

Inside, you can have your photo taken with life-size celebrit­ies. It’s very dis­con­cert­ing in a full room as you attempt to determ­ine who is alive, and who is wax. Some celebs are “lar­ger than life”. For instance, Sly Stal­lone isn’t 6 feet tall. He’s smal­ler than Avril: we know, as we’ve been in the same lift as him in LAX inter­na­tional air­port. Someone is try­ing it on.

Speak­ing of celebs ‘try­ing it on’, there is a “spe­cial place” to have your photo taken with Brad Pitt or Julia Roberts you have to pay a spe­cial fee. I won­der who is get­ting the cash on this scam.

I caused a small round of laughter as I did the “bunny ears” or “v-sign” behind the heads of George W. Bush and Tony Blair. Why noone else felt com­pelled to dis­respect the most power­ful men in the world, I do not know. Oh, yes, our John Howard sits in the con­stel­la­tion of these stars of the inter­na­tional polit­ical stage. Our PM seems to be sport­ing a good tan, I notice.

On the way back, we start on our Marks and Spencer’s life­style by pur­chas­ing vari­ous items at this fam­ous store. Everything in this store is branded Marks and Spen­cer. It’s like going into Coles and only being able to pur­chase Home Brand, and I mean only. We are asked to leave Avril to shop for what M&S are fam­ous for: underwear.

In the after­noon, its a walk­ing tour with Gra­ham. He’s a scots­man, lead­ing tours in the centre of Lon­don: West­min­ster. Min­ster is an old term for church, and West means West of the Thames. Now its the home of Brit­ish par­lia­ment, West­min­ster Abbey (closed to tour­ists on Sundays), No. 10 Down­ing Street and the home to many politi­cians, evidently.

After the walk­ing tour, we go through the Cab­inet War Rooms. Expan­ded from my first visit in 1997, its an inter­est­ing view of the world in the 1940s — and at the seat of power at the time, in tense and troubled times.

Sat­urday, 03^rd April, 2004

Up early for a day in Lon­don. We caught an under­ground going the wrong way, but it was a cal­cu­lated risk. Any train from that sta­tion would con­nect us for our trip to the Brit­ish Museum.

The Brit­ish Museum is the cul­min­a­tion of 300+ years of Brit­ish Empire: a gift the con­queurs have given the mod­ern day Lon­don is a major tour­ist attrac­tion. All sorts of nation­al­it­ies have to return to Lon­don to see their antiquities.

It’s some sort of Ira­nian cul­tural fest­ival. In the midst of Avril get­ting her hands painted with Henna by Karee­mah; the Assyr­ian empire’s his­tory is a couple of rooms away.

Another example of this cul­tural pick-pocketing are Lord Elgin’s col­lec­tion of sculp­tural pieces from the Parthenon in Athens. Taken in the late 18^th Cen­tury, there is a piece of pro­pa­ganda explain­ing a side of the story of why they are no longer in Athens. Con­sid­er­ing that all Atheni­ans are work­ing on the 2004 Olympic ven­ues, there are not enough people to rebuilt the Parthenon at the moment, anyway.

We return via Harrod’s. Nor­mally with any tour­ist attrac­tion, there is the attrac­tion and the store in which you can pur­chase remind­ers that you’ve vis­ited the said attrac­tion. At Harrod’s, they’ve done away with the tour­ist attrac­tion and left the store. That is, you just get straight into the pur­chas­ing of paraphenalia remind­ing you that you’ve been to Harrod’s to pur­chase the para… well, you get the idea.

There is noth­ing redeem­ing about the place at all. Why would you pur­chase a new suit from Harrod’s? Or some per­fume? I can­not work it out. At least one of London’s two Krispy Kreme stores are in Harrod’s. And the Hodge’s are assist­ing the Diana & Dodi Death Con­spir­acy Theories.

A quick visit to the Vic­toria and Albert museum on the way back. Maybe I am museum’d out, but this one just didn’t grab me, Its a ram­bling collection.

Thank good­ness for the Lonely Planet Con­densed Guide of Lon­don. We can­not praise this book enough. Its the per­fect size for when you are out walk­ing around.

So far, we’ve coun­ted 25 MINIs of vari­ous types: 2 of these were the MINI Cooper S. The MINI is the car made for Lon­don. Its nippy, and can park/turn on a 1p. Even the shape and the cool­ness factor make it the per­fect car for Cool Brittania.

Fri­day, 02^nd April, 2004

A quick shower (yes, quicker the bet­ter) and we’re out on the street in Lon­don. “Panic on the Streets of Lon­don” (sorry, Mor­ri­sey) as the Hodge’s walk around slowly find­ing out where the heck we are.

A short walk to the Sci­ence Museum, closed on our last visit in 1997, is a find as we find spe­cial pieces of tech­no­logy on dis­play. We are all fas­cin­ated by the dis­play of every­day items. V2 rocket, cut-away Mini, Apple 1, Babbage’s Cal­cu­lator. His­tory made phys­ical. You can touch it and feel the history.

Dr. Phil­lip Nitschke’s Euthanasia Machine, used in Australia’s North­ern Ter­rit­ory is on dis­play. The soft­ware used by four ter­min­ally ill patients to euth­an­ise them­selves is on a 3.5inc floppy disk, loaded in a Lodin-supplied Toshiba laptop, has a strange hand-scrawled title: “Deliverance”

After wast­ing time (sorry, edit­or­ial com­ment) on “inter­act­ive dis­plays” — my rant here is that museums, to become more access­ible to the pub­lic, have decided to cre­ate these inane inter­act­ive areas. You ‘inter­act’ with the exhib­its and learn. To me, it’s a dis­trac­tion from the his­tory. They become quickly dated and expens­ive. This is sharply bought to home in the Med­ical His­tory sec­tion where the world ends in 1993. I advoc­ate “open-ended dis­plays” where its easy to extend every 5 to 10 years to add on the recent his­tory: espe­cially in a sci­ence and tech­no­logy museum.

Liam’s first exper­i­ence on the Under­ground is to Cent­ral shop­ping Lon­don, Oxford Cir­cus. The announce­ment at Oxford Cir­cus is “Pick­pock­ets work at this sta­tion”. Almost sounds like an endorse­ment from offi­cial­dom that pick­pock­et­ing is a valid career.

We’re off to Hamley’s which is Toys-r-Us in 7 floors, or FAO Schwartz on Lon­don. With more toys than you can look at in a day (although some in the party attemp­ted to do this), the prices were very expens­ive. Based on cur­rent exchange rates, you are pay­ing almost twice what you would pay in Aus­tralia. Other items such as food and books seem to be more reas­on­ably priced.

On Oxford and Regent Streets, there is a war between “The Gap” cloth­ing stores and all oth­ers — I coun­ted about 4 in less than a Km, and Star­bucks vs. Cafe Nerro. So far, Cafe Nerro wins in my book for good cof­fee and food. Prices not too bad, either.

In cent­ral West­min­ster (cent­ral Lon­don) there is a spe­cial toll on cars enter­ing the cent­ral CBD. Buses and Taxis every­where. Shame there is no toll on rub­bish col­lec­tion trucks: one inches along in front of our No.10 bus to Kens­ing­ton High Street as we pass the MINI store on Park Lane.

Home, early to bed, as a long day catches up with us.

Thursday, 01^st April, 2004

Being a pro­fes­sional trav­el­ler, you for­get many of the small little routines you run before you leave. Hav­ing two ama­teur trav­el­lers this trip has reminded me of the les­sons learnt.

Like remov­ing mobile phones from pock­ets, and the need to throw away any­thing resem­bling a knife or scis­sors from carry-on lug­gage. More on this later.

Wind­ing down from work is going to take some time. I keep for­get­ting to for­get to think about stuff. Oh, yeah. There’s noth­ing I can do about this now — so I’ll leave it be.

We’re trav­el­ling excep­tion­ally light this trip. 6 bags, all carry-on, between us three. Avril has done a super job in cull­ing unwanted items. I know on the return it won’t be as effi­cient as we pur­chase “stuff”

QF127 has a new, refur­bished 747. Busi­ness Class has the new “Skybeds” as the seat­ing. We’re like kids with new toys as Allison, the friend­li­est stew­ard­ess I’ve ever met, show us the ropes. In the air, about an hour late, and the first thing we do is play with the “skybeds”. Yes, you do get horizontal.

On the work front, read­ing the Media sec­tion of Thursday 1^st April Aus­tralian. Seems like ACP’s NW magazine man­aged to get a scoop on other weekly magazines on the Tom and Penelope Cruz story. The story broke at 3.30pm Sydney time. The NW team scrapped the cover and man­aged to get a new story and cover out by 10.30pm — ready for the mid­night press dead­line. On the stands on Monday, ahead of the com­pet­i­tion. It was a proud moment read­ing this, know­ing you’ve played a small part in the pro­cess of mak­ing people’s busi­nesses work bet­ter. Kerry, I hope you’re read­ing this.

The view of Sydney on a sunny day is impress­ive. Why would you leave this place? To see what you’re miss­ing, I suppose.

The “Skybed” is actu­ally a bed in the sky. Had a good 2 hour kip on the way up to Hong Kong. Geoff Dixon, CEO of Qantas is in First Class. No won­der the Cabin crew up front seemed tense. Busi­ness Class, at least down­stairs, was half full. I am sur­prised Geoff didn’t come around and speak to his cus­tom­ers. I would have. The Director’s I work with would have, too. Its just a good thing to do. You find out so much more about what’s going on when you get through the lay­ers of indir­ec­tion and management.

Oh, and these new Skybeds have a nor­mal power out­let. You can plug in your nor­mal power cord into a power point, twist, and you’ve got power. Liam goes off on a mis­sion to Nor­mandy in Medal of Honor: Spearhead.

Hong Kong is rained in, and we land near 6.30pm local. Hav­ing never been to Hong Kong, we get lost for a moment look­ing for the Qantas lounge. A sense of fore­bod­ing over the 13 hour flight is over us all. A quick check of the air­port elec­tron­ics store shows me that buy­ing elec­tronic gear in Aus­tralia is still com­pet­it­ive; but Hong Kong has a bazil­lion more mobile phones to choose from.

Hong Kong secur­ity police; not those armed with Heck­ler and Koch, but those on the Xray machines pick up a pair of scis­sors in a first-aid kit. The ques­tion Avril has is why Sydney Secur­ity didn’t? Admit­tedly, they are blunt nosed. Sadly for Avril, the scis­sors find a new home in a Hong Kong land­fill so we’re not hindered at every Xray between here and home, in 26 days time.

Wait­ing for the plane. No SMS on the mobile, so people must be swear­ing and curs­ing at me back in Sydney. Or they are just get­ting on with it; which is prob­ably the case!

Thursday, 01^st April, 2004

The end of the longest April Fools Day in my life.

The flight via Brit­ish Air­ways to Lon­don was full, and the Club World (I think that was the class. There seems to be about 5 dif­fer­ent classes of seats on BA flights, accord­ing to the inf­light magazine, “High Life”. Yeah, “High Life”)

Seat­ing is a strange forward/backward “love seat” arrange­ment. The neg­at­ive G’s on takeoff is quite dis­con­cert­ing, evid­ently. I noticed that the pas­sen­gers in first class are sup­plied with spe­cial, dark grey paja­mas to change into. Three dif­fer­ent pas­sen­gers popped into the loos and changed. They looked like prison inmates in their getup. The safety video is a little dated. The hair­styles are at least 12 years old. Even the “mobile phone” used is old. Time to update!

There is an arrange­ment of three old black and white pic­tures on the wall in front of us. The first depicts two BOAC Con­stel­la­tions on a tar­mac with a local peas­ant on a horse-drawn cart under­neath. The second is of a fam­ily eat­ing in their Sunday-best clothes on their way some­where. The last is of some tour­ists at a fam­ous Ara­bian attrac­tion. The world has changed in many ways since the 1950’s.

At arrival at 5.05am in Heath­row, it is 10degC in Lon­don, and still dark. The BA cap­tain says that the fore­cast is 14degC and rain for Lon­don. We’ll see. Within 20 minutes, were through immig­ra­tion and an unmanned cus­toms. Yes, we could walk straight through the cus­toms door, and there was not a soul to check out our poten­tial cus­toms viol­a­tion. Smug­gling, a pop­u­lar pro­fes­sion in Eng­land for the past 2000 years seems to be mandated.

Bob the Ports­mouth taxi driver, after a 45pound fare, finds our new home for 9–10 days. Kens­ing­ton, just south of Kens­ing­ton High Street.

Har­rods. Tour­ist trap.


Har­rods. The Hodges assist fund­ing Diana-Dodi con­spir­acy the­or­ies


Inside the Brit­ish Museum. A Roman emperor watches on.


Karee­mah Hen­nas Avrils hand


Karee­mah Hen­nas Avrils Hand


Liam and unnamed statue, Brit­ish Museum


Gran­ite Egyp­tian statue, Brit­ish Museum


Rosetta Stone, Brit­ish Museum


Brit­ish Museum


Avril and Liam enter the Brit­ish Museum


Avril and Liam at Earls Court Under­ground sta­tion


Avril and Nick with cut­away Mini, Sci­ence Museum


Nick and Bab­bages Cal­cu­lat­ing engine, Sci­ence Museum


Liam and Steph­en­sons Rocket. Sci­ence Museum


Liam and V2 diarama


Kens­ing­ton Court, Lon­don


Avril and Liam, Kens­ing­ton High St, Lon­don


Avril and Liam, Kens­ing­ton High St, Lon­don


View from flat in Lon­don


view from Club World seat. Quaint view of his­tory


Liam asleep, Hong Kong Qantas Club


Wait­ing for BA026 to Leave


Medal of Honor at 34,000 feet


View over Aus­tralia


Liam look­ing down upon Aus­tralia


The Hodges ready to depart


The 747 ready to leave.


A view toward Sydney from Qantas Club, Sydney


All our lug­gage. This is it.


Nick, Qantas Club Sydney


Sydney icons await­ing our return


Sydney Har­bour Bridge lat­tice­work


Good­bye Neut­ral Bay


Avril and Liam leav­ing


Nick and Thompson Sub­ma­chine gun.


Liam and Thompson Sub­ma­chine gun.


Liam and his first Sher­man Tank


Nick pens­ive as he is about to exit a land­ing craft on D-Day


Two pan­els of many show­ing US air­craft loss dur­ing WW2 from the UK.


US planes eagerly attempt­ing to exit the Amer­ican Air Museum


Four of Eight scrolls show­ing 30000 US air­man lost from UK in WW2


Rolls-Royce Mer­lin in Spit­fire


Avril and Nick, Dux­ford, April 2004


Liam and Lan­caster, Dux­ford, April 2004


Liam and Avril, Dux­ford, April 2004


Arrival at Cam­bridge, April 2004


Avril and Nick, West­min­ster, April 2004


Someone has style in West­min­ster, April 2004


Avril and Nick in West­min­ster, April 2004


Big Ben in West­min­ster, April 2004


Liam, Big Ben in West­min­ster, April 2004


Prin­cess Di looks at the Royal Fam­ily across the room. Not a part of the fam­ily at all. Telling state­ment


Later in the day, Nick was arres­ted by MI5 and the Secret Ser­vice


Avril and Robin Wil­li­ams


Nick falls in love with Hugh.


Avril and Nick, High Street Kens­ing­ton under­ground sta­tion, April 2004


say with Michael Caine accent: wheres the bloody clouds, then?


George Orwell’s house on Por­to­bello Road. Mad­ness due to mar­ket crowds drove him to write 1984


Nick on Por­to­bello Road. Didn’t buy a thing


Nelson’s Column: Tra­fal­gar Square.


No rub­bish bins on White­hall: and this is the res­ult: neatly stacked trash


Nick at Buck­ing­ham Palace. Queen still in France, so I couldn’t call in for tea,


Graf­fiti near Abbey Road Stu­dios.


Nick near Abbey Road Stu­dios.


Large foyer area of the Tate Mod­ern Gal­lery.


Mil­lenium Bridge to St Paul’s


Roman Water­wheel, Lon­don Museum


Liam wait­ing for Under­ground


Dodo at Nat­ural His­tory Museum. Just like the inter­act­ive dis­plays


Dino­saur at Nat­ural His­tory Museum.


Liam out­side Nat­ural His­tory Museum.


We saw this sign many times


Liam look­ing at Big Ben from ferry boat on the Thames


Pock-marked Chapel in Lon­don


Nick across the Thames from Big Ben


Dali paint­ing made phys­ical on the Thames near the Lon­don Eye


Nick and Liam on the Lon­don Eye


Liam look­ing down on White­hall from the Lon­don Eye


White­hall from the Lon­don Eye


Send­ing SMS from the Lon­don Eye


The Lon­don Eye


Plane through the Lon­don Eye


Avril and Liam wait­ing for the Under­ground,


Nick look­ing Imper­i­ous out­side Bedlam/Imperial War Museum


Liam next to WW1 tank, Imper­ial War Museum


Liam next to part of Rudolf Hess’ ME110


Sign from the trenches of WW1


Liam look­ing inside Jag­dp­an­ther at Imper­ial War Museum


Gates open­ing on the Tower Bridge


Guns on HMS Bel­fast aimed at Lon­don


Liam on Tower Bridge


Liam where people lost their heads, Tower of Lon­don


Only armed guard for the Coron­a­tion Jew­els at Tower of Lon­don


French guns from Water­loo at the Tower of Lon­don


White Tower at the Tower of Lon­don


Henry VIII’s armour at the Tower of Lon­don


Nick, the faux king at the Tower of Lon­don


Liam at the Tower of Lon­don


Mind the Gap


Nick in MINI Fact­ory Tour Garb, Oxford, Eng­land


Avril and Liam in MINI Fact­ory Tour Garb next to Aus­tin Power’s MINI from Gold­mem­ber, Oxford, Eng­land


Nick and Avril out­side MINI Fact­ory Tour, Oxford, Eng­land


Oxford­shire, Eng­land. Photo by Liam


Good­bye Kensignton!


Fol­low that MINI in Lon­don

Liam in a Gon­dola on Grand Canal


Nick and Avril on a Gon­dola, on Grand Canal, Venice


Liam feed­ing the Pigeons, Piazza Ste Marco, Venice


Look­ing out toward Ste Mag­giore, Venice


Avril and Nick near Bridge of Sighs, Venice


Liam and Avril in Piazza Ste Marco


Piazza Ste Marco


Dis­ney store in sad attempt of rip­ping of tour­ists near Ponte Rialto


Nick near Ponte Rialto, Venice


Avril near one of many jew­ellery stores in Venice


Lion looks on an empty St Mark’s Square, Venice


Palace on the Grand Canal, Venice


Nick inside the Doge’s Palace, Venice


Statues out­side Doge’s Palace, Venice


Gondeliers work­ing near the Rialto Bridge, Venice


Topling Tower, Venice


Shad­ows over Venice


Sky­line of Venice


St Mark’s Square, Venice


Canal, Venice


Statues carved in the corner of the Doge’s Palace, Venice


St Mark’s Square, Venice


Rail­way into Venice

Avril and Liam on the streets of Florence


Nick under­neath statue to Nic­colo Mac­chiavelli, Uff­izi Plaza


Look­ing upstream on the Arno on the Ponte Vec­chio


People being fleeced on the Ponte Vec­chio


Just one of the win­dows in one of the 50 jew­ellery stores on the Ponte Vec­chio


Men look­ing bored, Women look­ing in win­dows on the Ponte Vec­chio


Masses of people on the Ponte Vec­chio and shop­ping dis­trict of Florence


Mod­ern Florentine sky­line


Nicolo Machiavelli’s tomb, Basilica Ste Croce, Florence


Pigeon on stat­ute of Cosimo Medici. This is why you don’t want to end up a statue!


Avril look­ing at old fres­cos in Ogn­is­santi, Florence


Nick now has pur­chased the equivilent length of the Ponte Vec­chio in Gold, Florence


Florentine Streets­cape


Danger! Danger! Stalls in Florence


Liam the Michelangelo’s bet­ter Pieta, Museo Duomo, Florence


Arno from Uff­izi


Avril and Liam dwarfed by the Duomo and the Cam­pan­ile, Florence


Avril and Liam look at the fam­ous doors of the Baptistry, by Ghiberti


Nick very wet at the statue of Pisa. After many years of effort and recon­struc­tion and renov­a­tion: it still isn’t straight


A Room with a View: View from our Pen­sione in Florence


Basilica Sante Croce, Florence


Liam at Basilica Sante Croce, Florence


Park­ing space is at a premium in Florence, so small cars are essen­tial.


Mod­ern and Renais­sance walls in Florence


Nick and Naked Statue in Florence


Liam and Avril look over the Arno in Florence


McDon­alds attempts to hide them­selves in Florence


Duomo, Florence


Liam inside the Musuem of the Duomo, Florence


Florence

Liam and Nick are Hailed at the Col­lo­s­eum. This is one of them


Leftovers at the Roman Forum.


Nick and the She-Wolf and Romu­lus and Remus. Cap­it­oline Museums


Liam and Constantine’s foot, Cap­it­oline Museum


Only place in Rome with no Van­dal­ism: the Vat­ican walls.


Faith­ful miss the mod­ern Radio Vat­ican Tower in the dis­tance. Vat­ican Museum


Gal­leria della Geo­graphice is bet­ter than the Sis­tine Chapel. Vat­ican Museum


In the 16^th Cen­tury, a Pope asked all the naughty bits to be covered. Someone made a killing in Fig Leaves. Vat­ican Museum


The sign to the left says “no Scooby Doo Gang Allowed” to the Vat­ican Museum


Ran­dom piece of dis­carded Marble at the San Paolo Fuori le Mura


Popes in the round, San Paolo Fuori le Mura


Liam over­looks the Roman Forum


Triple park­ing (not just double park­ing) in Rome


Lime Green is the new Black in Italy.


Ironic in Rome: posters to a movie called “Luther”. In Rome. Way cool


Nick in the Piazza San Pietro.


Liam and Avril leav­ing St Paul’s Cathed­ral.


Tomb of Saint Paul at St Paul’s in the Vat­ican


Inside St Paul’s in the Vat­ican


Inside Saint Paul’s, Vat­ican


The most impress­ive build­ing in Rome, the Pathenon. Now a church, but still an impress­ive 2000 year old build­ing


Avril look­ing for shops at the Fontana de Trevi


Nick throws a coin into the foun­tain, Fontana de Trevi


From the Pal­at­ine to the Forum


Strange eight breasted god­dess in the Pal­at­ine


In the Pal­at­ine


Avril and Liam look­ing at a marble column in the Pal­at­ine


Col­loseo, Roma.


Ruins of Gla­di­ator train­ing camp, near the Col­loseo, Roma


Col­loseo at Night


Constantine’s Bronze Statue (head), Cap­it­oline Museum

Leav­ing Hong Kong; look­ing toward Sham Tseng


Leav­ing Hong Kong; bridge across to Lan­tau Island


In the taxi, leav­ing Hong Kong. Our bags almost des­troy the sus­pen­sion sys­tem.


Some of our bags in the Sheraton, Hong Kong


Lights of Hong Kong from the roof of Sheraton Towers, Kowloon, Hong Kong


Streets in Kowloon, Hong Kong


Streets in Kowloon, Hong Kong


Star­bucks attempts to invate the streets of Kowloon, Hong Kong


Pen­in­sula Hotel next­door to our hotel, Kowloon, Hong Kong

Peter and Jordan with the New Gate City tower (East) con­tain­ing the Adobe Japan office


Cat in Shin­agawa


Shrine in Shin­agawa


Nick says: Don’t rush the Train in Tokyo


Nick in Shibuya. Amaz­ing


Night lights in Shibuya


Mark in Shibuya


Shibuya


Lee and Mark brave the JR Yama­n­ote Line in Tokyo, Japan


Please trans­late this! Tokyo, Japan


JR Yama­n­ote line, Tokyo, Japan


Paul, Craig, Jordan and Lee wait­ing for a train in Tokyo


Hotel Sunny in rainy Tokyo


Lee and Jordan arriv­ing at Nar­ita, Japan


Over the Pacific, going to, Japan


Yoda­bashi Cam­era, Shin­juku, Tokyo, Japan


Nick, Shin­juku, Tokyo, Japan


View from Park Hyatt, Tokyo, Japan


Shrine, Kyoto, Japan


Mt Fuji on the Shinkansen to Kyoto, Japan


Mt Fuji on the Shinkansen to Kyoto, Japan


Adobe signs, Aki­habara, Japan


Nick in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan


JR sta­tion, Tokyo, Japan


Sun­tory time, Tokyo, Japan


Apple Store in Ginza, Tokyo, Japan


Rop­pongi, Tokyo, Japan


MINI store, Rop­pongi, Tokyo, Japan


Ponte Vec­chio store, Rop­pongi, Tokyo, Japan


Rop­pongi, Tokyo, Japan