This time...

... 30 years ago, I was living in my first house, was recovering after plastic surgery on my right hand and left foot, and still had two months before I stopped being an only child.

... 25 years ago I was in my fourth house, second year of school and was the oldest of three boys.

... 20 years ago was house nine, my final year of primary school - and the last time I was at the same school at the same time as any of my three brothers.

... 15 years ago unlucky house number 13 was balanced out by the fact I'd travelled overseas for the first time, finished high school and had the last of my seven operations earlier that year.

... 10 years ago I'd reached 20 houses, was one year off finally completing a university degree and had been living in a different city to my family for nearly two years, including when I'd gained a sister after four consecutive brothers.

.. 5 years ago I'd lost track of how many places I'd lived, was living and working in London, had visited 19 different countries and would soon after go to a Crowded House concert with a good friend who stopped talking to me six months later.

... today I've been in the same house for 27 months, have visited 40 countries on five continents, travelled hundreds of thousands of kilometres both in the air and on the ground, gained a sister-in-law and nephew, become a godfather, run a backpackers hostel and now wear a suit to work.

In the words of F. Bueller:

"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

I was pretty close to my Grandma - including in age! She was just a week past 40 when I was born and even sat down and sent Mum and I personal letters each saying how thrilled she was at becoming a grandmother.
Over the next 10 years we developed a very strong bond - as she did with all her grandchildren. I can remember her calling me up having just purchased some new cricket cards; she'd go through all the names, and any I didn't have were straight to me!
At the end of 1990 she celebrated her 50th birthday, still the life of the party. Soon afterwards we moved interstate but knew she'd always be there.
In early 1991 Grandma started complaining about headaches. After many tests it was discovered that she had a brain tumour; one that an operation could not fully remove. After that she was a completely different person - occasionally there'd be flickers of who she once was, but the spark had left her eyes.
In September 1991 Ressie Hannaford passed away in a nursing home in Kilcoy. It was such a sad and unexpected end for such a strong woman, one who will always be remembered by those who knew her well.

In honour of Grandma I'll be riding in the 2013 Ride To Conquer Cancer - but to participate I need to raise over $2500 in donations. This is where you lot come in - any donations, no matter how small, are welcome! Donate here and help our crew fight all kinds of cancer!

Grandma in the 80s.

Do We Just Not Get Customer Service?

NOT so long ago some friends of mine came up to Brisbane for the weekend. I showed them the sights: Southbank, the Queensland Museum, the Downunder Bar, Kangaroo Point etc. Even caught a Broncos match with Hamish once Leanne had headed home (they won unfortunately).

What struck me though wasn't the fact that it rained pretty much the whole time they were up here (and sunny either side of their stay), but rather Leanne's scathing comments on the service they'd received at a restaurant they went to. I can't remember the exact words, but the general gist of it was that she'd rather have dental surgery done by an arthritic dentist using rusty pliers than have to go through that again.

Search an Australian news site for "customer service", "tourism" and "Australia" and it won't take you long before you start coming across articles like this and this that bemoan the poor state of customer service in our tourism industry. And it's not just tourism either: this article complains about the poor service he received in a Canberra store compared to a New York online retailer.

So do we just not get it?

Having travelled widely - albeit mostly in the budget section - I can personally vouch for the fact that we are by no means the worst when it comes to quality customer service. Spend a bit of time in France and see how much help you get from some local hoteliers. Likewise in some parts of Italy, where tourists will always come visit just because it's Italy, and you have to visit Italy at least once in your life.

In comparison to places like the USA, Greece and Sri Lanka though, we have a lot to make up. While I realise my position as a tour guide meant I got to know tourist operators quite well, the welcomes I got from the crews on Paros and Santorini after six months away meant I'd go back right now if I had the cash. Likewise it was refreshing to dine alone in the States but still have an attentive waiter/waitress that knew when I needed my beer topped up. Likewise in Sri Lanka I never came across a hotelier that wouldn't give me the keys to his house - come to think of it, one actually did!

So how does Australia pick up its act? Australians being so anti-tipping doesn't help - why put in the extra effort when you're still going to get paid the same as Joe Average standing next to you?

One suggestion in this article by Clive Dormanis that we need to actively train customer service staff in, well, customer service:

So much of the "product" is what we call service. It's not rocket surgery. In my opinion, too many people in the customer service side of tourism are being dragged in off the street without specialist training. And it just doesn't cut it for the industry to be whingeing about the mining industry stealing all its best staff.

 This ties in with what an outsider has to say:

I’m no tourism expert, but I’ve seen too many industries respond poorly to structural and cyclical threats (retail is an example). The main solution has been to cut costs, damage product quality and wreck brands. Company morale falls and staff only turn up for the pay cheque. Decades of hard work are lost in a few years as even loyal customers start to give up on the product. Innovation and great leadership are lacking.

As an observer outside the tourism industry, it seems so much money is spent (and often wasted) on attracting tourists to Australia, and not enough on improving their travel experience and encouraging repeat business. Do enough international travellers to Australia rave about their experience upon returning home? What about domestic travellers?

While we have the natural beauty that makes people want to come here, what we really need to do is start getting people coming back. To do that we need to invest in our customer service staff - there will certainly be some short-term pain, but imagine the long-term gain.

Of Religion, Atheism & Fanatics...

WATCHED The Blind Side on the idiot box tonight. A nice enough movie, with Sandra Bullock managing to portray a feisty yet caring mother to perfection. Had my late grandmother been rich, American and from the South rather than relatively poor, Australian and from the Deep North I could see her being pretty similar to Bullock's portrayal of Leigh Anne Tuohy.

What got me thinking though was a comment on the movie's Wikipedia page. Apparently Bullock wasn't convinced she was right for the role. As she said in this interview, Bullock was intimidated by what the article describes as the Touhy's "evangelical Christian faith". It was only after meeting the Tuohys that Bullock felt she could take on the role:

"One of my biggest concerns stepping into this was how people use their faith and their religion as a banner, and then they don't do the right thing," explains Bullock. "They go, 'I'm a good Christian, and I go to church, and this is the way you should live your life.' And I'm like, do not give me a lecture on how to live my life when you go to church every week, but I know you're still sleeping around on your wife. I told Leigh Anne the banner waving scared me because I've had experiences that haven't been great. I don't buy a lot of people who use that as their shield. But she was so open and honest and forthright. And I thought, wow, I finally met someone who practices but doesn't preach—someone who blazes trails, and they do it as a family."


The Tuohy's religion is respectfully covered in the movie. You know that the family are strong Christians, yet it's not shoved into your face like the ground does when you fall over. You can argue that the Tuohys taking in the homeless Michael Oher is in the truest Christian tradition.

Do you know what? What to me is exactly what religion should be about. Right now religion's copping a hammering left, right and centre. Some of it's entirely self-inflicted, like the Catholic Church's continued paedophile priest problem or the various fanatics from all religions claiming theirs is the only true way and that if you're not doing it their way you're all going to burn in hell. The continued opposition to gay marriage by organisations like the Australian Christian Lobby doesn't help matters either. Some comes from our increasing scientific knowledge, which athiests suggest are proof you'd get just as much spiritual guidance worshipping a bag of Doritos as Divine Deities.

Question has to be asked though whether a evangelical atheist is any different to an evangelical religious types? As much as I hate people trying to convert me, calling someone's beliefs into question doesn't necessarily end with someone walking off in shock like in the movie Dogma. To use a personal example, I have a very religious friend while I consider myself agnostic, yet religion isn't something that comes up between us. She has her views, I have mine, and while they differ we respect that about each other.

And it doesn't matter if you're religious or not; the Ten Commandments are a pretty good way to live your life. Athiests and agnostics will probably ignore 3 (do not take the Lord's name in vain) and 4 (Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy), but the other eight are still pretty much spot-on.

Granted, there will always be people who do stupid and evil in the name of religion: seriously, where in the Bible does it say two people who love each other can't get married because they're the same gender, whereas a man and woman can definitely get married even if it's only because there's a child on the way after a one-night stand?
But while people like the Tuohys can use their faith to change someone else's life for the better then shouldn't we focus on that as being a positive for religion?

Of Being A Queenslander

BACK in the mid 1990s my grandfather remarried in the little town of Benarkin, just off the D'Aguilar Highway about 150 north-west of Brisbane.

The whole extended family headed bush for the event. Mum and Dad dragged the four of us boys out; Mum's surviving siblings were there; and for quite possibly the only time ever our four country cousins managed to look better than us as their parents made sure they were dressed up for the occasion. I'm personally blaming a spot of teenage rebellion, but that's neither here nor there.

The whole day had passed without a hitch. Grandad was marrying again after losing his wife back in 1991; Helena's family gave us our first real introduction to the wonders of the Dutch accent. My brother Matt was his usual funny self (and I mean that genuinely; as a kid there were few else that could raise a laugh out of everyone) - all in all it was that kind of family gathering that you remember fondly when everything inevitably implodes a few years down the track.

Then my uncle got up to give the best man's speech.

Now I should mention here and now that my uncle is one of the nicest blokes you'd ever want to meet. Always willing to lend a hand, genuinely happy to see family (including his godson), and always willing to share a beer with anyone.

On this occasion he'd shared a beer or two with everyone. So much so, that when he got up to speak, his focus may not have entirely been on welcoming Helena to the family.

"I'd like to welcome y'all to Queensland. Coz you're not in Australia anymore, you're in Queensland now and it's the best bloody country in the world. We've got the best bloody beer, the best bloody women..."

And so on.

You see, my uncle is your stereotypical Queenslander. He's proud of where he's from. Doesn't need to think too much about it. He is, as John Harms put it in this article:

"In Queensland you are born true. You start true, because you are a Queenslander. It’s as if growing up in Queensland confers on babies a purity. Queenslanders don’t have to look forward to a life of searching for truth. They have the truth. They live in a state of Queensland grace."

This is my uncle; he's a Queenslander.

FOR others, being a Queenslander hasn't always been something to be proud of, particularly during the reign of former Premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen. In his book Pig City, Andrew Stafford quotes singer Tex Perkins talking about Brisbane:

"Brisbane you have to leave. You come out of your mother, you go to school, and then you think, oh shit, what am I doing here?"

By the time you've got to this quote, you can understand why. Page after page describes life in Bjelke-Petersen's Queensland: men targeted by police for having long hair; journalists having their phones tapped because they'd spoken out against the government; and indigenous men and women thrown into the watchhouse just for being black. Throughout the book Stafford talks about Brisbane bands that felt they simply had to leave: The Saints, The Riptides, The Go-Betweens.

BUT let's not focus on the past, other than to remember that it's there. Let's fast-forward to 1988, where for much of my generation our first memory wasn't an aging Premier trying in vain to lead the whole country, but this very 80s tune on the tv:

Let's all join together

Our moment now has come

Let's view the golden future

Australian sons have won

Let's show them all what out-stretched arms

Of welcome can be worth

And welcome all the world to celebrate Australia's birth

...

Together we'll show the world

Under Bjelke-Petersen Queensland developed at a fast rate, with large numbers of immigrants making their way north from Sydney and Melbourne. By the time of World Expo '88 the whole state was changing: Bjelke-Petersen left office (albeit rather involuntarily) in December 1987; but his little festival meant that Brisbane was now in full world view. Hell, even the Soviets put Brisbane on a stamp! With Brisbane even bidding for the 1992 Summer Olympics, it seemed to us there wasn't anything Queensland couldn't do when we put our minds to it.

And slowly but surely, Queensland improved. Successive governments helped improve local infrastructure; police corruption was curtailed after the Fitzgerald Inquiry and restaurants and cafes begun to pop up. At first it was just one or two, before dozens appeared in places like Paddington, West End and New Farm. The Gallery of Modern Art now anchors the Queensland Cultural Centre, three words that once upon a time would have been an oxymoron right up there with Microsoft Works and Military Intelligence.

Over the past weekend I've had the pleasure of taking two friends from Perth around town. One of them commented to me about how he felt Brisbane was so much like a European city - not so much in architecture, but in the general feel of the place, in how there were people out and about of a night time. I thought about and reckoned that yeah, he's right. For me, moving from Europe back to Brisbane hasn't been as big a leap as I thought, with both of us growing during our time apart.

This is me; I'm a Queenslander.

SO where do these two Queenslanders meet? For all the talk of Queensland growing up, there's still a level of parochialism here that deeply unsettles an Canberra emigre friend. Notwithstanding that a mutual friend is quite possibly the only parochial Canberran is existence, he's right. Up here the local media still puts everything in Queensland terms; mind you there are born-and-bred Queenslanders that support New South Wales in the State of Origin these days. Can't imagine that back in Joh's day!

Perhaps trying to link Queensland old and new is beyond me at this point. I could try linking it to the Origin, where we all unleash our inner redneck and curse the men in blue, the ref in pink and anyone else that dare stop our boys; but that Queensland bond is surely too strong for three games of footy a year to account for. I am but a young man, one who has spent more time this century out of Queensland than in it. Perhaps it's back over to Mr Harms with some of his closing paragraphs:

"In the space of half an hour, listening to the radio between Cardwell and Tully, the announcer managed to assure me of the following Queensland qualities: resilience, resourcefulness, uniqueness, reliability, heroism. Billy Moore’s celebrated State of Origin moment, when he spontaneously yelled “Queenslander” in the tunnel before running out for the second half, is actually profound. It’s enough in Queensland to encapsulate the essence of the way of life in that single word."

"When I think of Queensland I still smile. That means, in my mind, that a romanticised view prevails, a view that has been conditioned to ignore the racism and bigotry, the materialism and hollowness. The tug is there. The tug is Queensland’s liberating fatalism, its acceptance of things beyond its control, its mood of freedom, its call to ratbaggery."

Sounds about right to me.

Parlez vous Francais, horribles Australienne?

SHE was about as stereotypically French as you could get.

Not in looks. Short, slim and blonde, she looked more German or Scandinavian upon walking into the reception. At the time I was trying to guide two English girls to their campervan depot so they could ride off into the sunset, but apparently the jokes while doing so were a little too much for her.

"What time is it? I want to know because I am waiting."

"I see this, but I still need to finish serving these ladies before I can check you in. I'll be with you in a moment."

I checked her in, thankful the unnecessarily long shift was nearly over. With a bit of luck she'd be out of town before I opened reception at 7am the next morning.

No such luck.

Around 7.30 she came down to reception, laden down by the five or so bags that must have contained all her travelling essentials - and then some. After checking her out and refunding her key deposit, I decided to try strike up a conversation as she got her bags in order.

Turned out mon petit ami was off to Hong Kong before heading pretty much anywhere other than Australia. The people were horrible: it seems no one would offer to help this crazy little French woman as she struggled down the street with her many, many bags. Australia was a rich country, but the unlike the people in South America, New Zealand, Europe - pretty much everywhere else in the world - people here would just ignore her.
Funny that, because my experience in Europe was that the only help you'd get was from Old Mate relieving you of your valuables.
We are a young country as well, only 200 years old. Ah, I said, but out Indigenous culture was the oldest in the world. Beats everyone else by a good 20,000 years or so (give or take).
Nope, she was only interested in the European history of Australia. Rightio then.

Then it got onto languages. She brought it up, not me: by this point I was being lectured rather than participating in a proper cross-cultural conversation. Amongst our many faults as people was that Australians are too lazy to learn other languages. In this at least we were (begrudgingly) lumped in with other English speaking countries.

Now on this I reckon I had her. My theory is that it's a lot easier to learn other languages somewhere like Europe. Travelling by road from Paris, you're only 450km from London, just under 600km to the major German city of Frankfurt, 900km to the Italian city of Milan, and just over 1000km to the Spanish city of Barcelona. Not to mention the proximity of the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium or even the Principality of Luxembourg.
Travel 450km north from Brisbane and you'll end up just north of Bundaberg, where the only time they speak foreign languages is when they're on the local rum. Head 900km east of Adelaide and you'll finish in Wagga Wagga, where the only thing that may seem foreign are some of the footy fields. Go 1000km in any direction from Perth and you'll be smack bang in the middle of nowhere!

The point I make of all this is that if you're learning a foreign language in Europe, you don't have all that far to go to practice. Hell, if you're an European Union citizen you can even go live there for as long as you want. Here in Australia at least, the nearest French-speaking part of the world is New Caledonia, and last I checked you had to jump through some pretty major hoops to live and work there. Instead of spending a couple of hundred Euros to pop across The Channel, we have to spend a good couple of thousand dollars and spend at least 24 hours on a plane just to reach any European city.

Or how about this. Just say Hypothetical Stuart (HS) studied French throughout high school - that is ages 12-17. HS was very diligent in his studies, routinely in the top three in his class and showing an aptitude for la belle langue.
Then HS goes to uni. He's studying all kinds of things and generally being a very busy young lad, before heading off to a country town to work in the local newspaper. At no point does he have the chance to put into practice any of his high school French, which means that when he finally arrives in l'hexagone, he only remembers a few words and is forced to repeat the phrase parlez-vous Francais a hell of a lot.

Finally, to drive my point home further, I would like to point out that in Canada parents can put their children through French-speaking schools. I have a friend from the prairies of Alberta that is fluent in French - not just because she learnt it in school, but because she had the chance to use it all the time. Not only that, but within their own country they can visit and/or live in the very French part of Canada otherwise known as the province of Quebec.

Not that this would have made any kind of impression on this woman. I started to talk, but was cut off by her superior knowledge of four or five different languages. After finally getting her bags together she asked if I could hold open the door while she waddled through. As she walked past I wished her au revoir et bon voyage, before walking back inside and muttering under my breath "and don't come back, you fucking self-important piece of shit".

Well, we are horrible people remember? Wouldn't want to let her down or anything.

SAJ's Guide to the 2012 Queensland Election...

CAN you feel it?
The excitement?
Can you control yourself?
CAN YOU CONTROL YOURSELF?!?!?

Course you can. It's only the Queensland state election, where voters like you and me get to choose between a woman with an upside-down mouth; a short bald man; and the man in a hat. Or at least the sheep people following the man in the hat.
Given Australia's commitment to democracy through compulsory voting, all locals over the age of 18 have to vote in this election. Queensland voters have only changed ruling parties three times in the 31 years I've been alive, but are looking a very good chance to turf out the ruling Labor Party and replace them with the opposition LNP. That being the case, let's have a look at the main parties and their contenders for that most glamourous of world political appointments: Queensland Premier.


ANNA BLIGH, Australian Labor Party (ALP)
Anna Bligh became Queensland Premier in September 2007 after her grinning media tart predecessor Peter Beattie resigned to give his kids a break from seeing him on the tv all the time. Since becoming Premier Bligh's government has dealt with a number of crisis, including the Queensland Health payroll debacle where thousands of people were either unpaid, underpaid or overpaid when they migrated to a new IT system.
This resulted in Blight having a very low approval rating until the Queensland floods, when her "We Are Queenslanders" speech helped stamp her as a true leader, in the process sending her approval ratings back into positive territory for the first time in centuries. Unfortunately for the ALP this warm glow soon faded when the government went back to screwing things up, Bligh distinguishing herself with a vicious attack on LNP leader Campbell Newman for his family's business interests on the last parliamentary sitting day.
Is quite short but not an issue as she is female.

CAMPBELL NEWMAN, Liberal-National Part (LNP)
Campbell Newman is an ex-army officer who left his job running the Brisbane City Council to try and run for Premier - a bold strategy when you don't even have a seat in Parliament yet (apparently all the other kids kept saying "seat's taken" when he tried to sit down). Like a diver attempting a triple-somersault-half-pike-double-twist-turn-around-once-and-do-the-eagle-rock to win the Olympics, Newman's decided to do things the hard way by running for the seat of Ashgrove, where by all accounts local member Kate Jones does actually know how to tie up her own shoelaces. Was only picked because no-one knew anything about any of the sitting LNP members.
While Brisbane mayor Newman distinguished himself by building lots of tolled tunnels and bridges, a rude shock to locals who would rather not pay to drive thank-you-very-much. No word on tunnels to Fraser Island or the long-awaited Toowoomba Metro System, although he has strangely come out and said no to the Cross-River Rail project, preferring instead that all trains over the Brisbane River follow each other in a giant conga line during peak hours.
Is quite short, which is apparently an issue as a male.

AIDON MCLINDON Katter's Australia Party
Close election expected, new right-wing party named after a maverick national politician starts getting media time... shit, are we really doing this again? For Pauline Hanson's One Nation in 1998, read Bob Katter's Australia Party in 2012. The Man In The Hat has been busy, driving old London double-deckers around and dancing with "flash mobs" to take his words to the streets. Expected to win at least a few seats, although matching One Nation's 11 in 1998 will take some doing.
Oh, who's Aidon McLindon? Apparently the state leader. Wears glasses I think. Not sure how tall he is though.

EXPECTED OUTCOME
Just about everyone outside (and quite a few inside) the ALP have their money on the LNP. Bookies, professional punters, hairdressers, that bloke that always wants to talk when you're standing at the urinal: they're all going with the little fella. Bligh isn't being helped by the national ALP leadership schemozzle either, with local lad Kevin Rudd saying he didn't get a fair go last time and that he wants to play at being Prime Minister again. For the LNP, no-one's saying who would be Premier if the party wins a majority but Newman fails to land his 10m dive, very possibly on account of all possible candidates being a bigger buzz-kill than Buzz Killington.

SAJ'S VERDICT?
LNP by about 5 seats, Newman to scrape through, majority of Queenslanders to go down the pub and celebrate the fact that we don't have to go to the polls again for a while.
What's that?
Council elections April 28?


Oh for f#$%'s sake...

Going down the road? That'll be a million thanks...

SO BRISBANE apparently now has the world's third most expensive public transport. We're only behind London and Oslo and with a further 15% hike planned for next year, it can't be long before we gain that particular crown.

The State Government is trying to tell us that this is all to help fund improvements in the system. And to be fair, infrastructure such as the network of busways around Brisbane doesn't come cheap. The section of the Northern Busway from Roma Street to Herston cost $135 million back in 2004; the tunnel linking Windsor to Kedron pocket change for an Arab oil sheik and not many others.

But here's the thing though. Having travelled the world I've ended up on a fair amount of public transport. In London for example, a trip around Zone 1 on the Underground will set you back £4.30 - around A$6.50. Pricey, yes; but for that you get an extensive network where trains run so frequently that there's not a timetable to be found. Instead you just look at the display on the platform to see when your next train arrives. Not bad when you consider that back in 2007 that same ticket cost you £4.00.

Here in Brisbane a trip around Zone 1 will set you back $4.50. Cheaper, but the devil is in the detail. Grab an Oyster Card in London and that same peak-hour trip will only set you back £2.00 (about A$3), where here in Brisbane your Go Card costs $3.05. Keep travelling all day with an Oyster Card in London's Zone 1 and the most you'll pay is £8.40; keep travelling Brisbane's Zone 1 on your Go Card and you could well find yourself $24.40 under by the time the free travel kicks in after 10 trips in one week.

But surely unlimited free trips after 10 is a pretty sweet deal right? Yep - if you have the time to do what this guy did. The backpacker who bought that card can now travel from the Sunshine Coast to the Gold Coast, stopping at pretty much station along the way for a quick beer (although upon getting out at Dakabin they might be tempted just to get straight back on board). Expect many copycats in the coming weeks, but let's face it: who has the time to do these things? And more to the point, who wants to catch a train and bus down to Surfers Paradise when you can drive in half the time?

On the topic of backpackers, this system really is bad for them. Just say someone wants to catch the bus out to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary before heading to Mount Coot-tha, coming back into the city then jumping on the CityCat for a quiet cruise before the sun goes down. Said punter asks if they can buy a day pass, only for the receptionist to burst out laughing, holding his hides as the spasms take hold. Eventually he recovers enough to explain that there are no day passes in Brisbane, leading both to question why and mutter dark things under their breaths about the Queensland Government.

Not that the current Opposition's much better. LNP leader Campbell Newman thinks that the Cross-River Rail project - which would double the number of inner-city rail river crossings to 2 - is "an $8 billion unfunded fantasy".

Sigh.

In a time where global warming is something we're trying to avoid, surely a responsible government's best bet is to try help get people out of their cars and onto public transport.

Last I checked, continually raising the prices isn't really going to do that.