Today, I woke up at 0615 and by 0630 I was out doing walkabout in Perth city centre. It was an eerie experience, very few people shared the streets with me. Apart from two homeless people, some travelers at the railway station and a surprising number of policemen and policewomen at the said railway station, the streets were empty. Nonetheless, I walked for some two hours finding the Technip and IBM buildings during my travels. Without exception, no shops or eateries were open. Even towards the end of my walk, the only places that were beginning to open their doors were McDonalds and Hungry Jacks (which looks remarkably like Burger King, and I’m guessing that they are one and the same)…so I went hungry and thirsty. On the subject of BK and McDonalds…I note that the prices over in Oz are exactly the same numerical representation as the prices here in the UK, i.e. a A$5.75 meal is £5.75…rip off Britain.

I returned to the hotel and took breakfast with my Spanish amigo Oscar. This was a good thing as the next activity, which promised to provide breakfast, turned out to provide the smallest breakfast possible, consisting of cheese, biscuits and dried fruit. Oscar and I were grateful that we had some real fruit, coffee and pastries in the hotel. After breakfast (the next activity), Richard, Penny, Oscar and I walked down to the Barrack Street piers and picked up a boat that cruised up the Swan River headed towards Guildford and the wineries (vineyards) beyond that. We, Richard, Penny, Oscar, Art, Goshi, Nap, Mat, Peter, Katya, Sabrina, and I blagged the seats at the bow (front) of the boat. The skipper noted via the ship’s microphone system that we might find it cold…cha, not a chance! The sun shone for most of the up river trip, a tan was in the making. The cruise up river was super, the sun was shining, the wine was starting to flow (it was only 1030, lucky I had the hotel breakfast!)

Whilst heading up river, the skipper noted that one of the Swan river’s wooden bridges was so low, that he had to take in ballast to lower the boat in the water. Indeed, we even came to a complete stop as the skipper’s mate checked the boat’s height against the bridge. Part of me though that this was marketing trick designed to impress us!

The Houghton vineyard. Crisp and clear Chardonnay’s, the Classic was nicely chilled and hit the spot. Previously known as the “burgundy”, the Classic had to be renamed because of a dispute with the French (quelle surprise?) So, five bottles of white, 5 bottles of red, that was our choice. Our group, which included many other tourists, did not finish all the wine – it was interesting noting which wines still had over half a bottle of wine remaining.   The Sandalford vineyard. Sadly, I had already written the Sandalford wines off before I arrived – for me, Australian wine is very much an acquired taste, the few bottles of Sandalford offerings that I had drunk in the UK taught me that it was never going to be a taste that I would or could acquire. That said, Penny bought Richard’s parents a bottle of their A$95 offering (A$5 for a tasting glass)…and that did taste rather good. Three whites, a couple of reds and a liquor port were on offer. Despite my personal disappointment, the rest of the group soon finished off the bottles, leaving little or nothing.

You know, I couldn’t help how much this picture at the Sandalford winery should be the water hole on a lovely golf course:

I noted that in both vineyards, the bottles that we started with were all we were going to get…once a bottle was finished, another did not appear in its place. Given that there is a wine glut in Australia right now, i.e. there’s too much of the stuff, producers are destroying grape harvests, I found this “one bottle” rule rather surprising. I’m told it takes some five years from vine planting to decent wine production, many newcomers look into the idea but are put off by the lead time, and rightly so. I guess this is something the French get right, they pop out another bottle when the first taster is empty.

Returning home, the trip down river magically seemed to take a lot less time. The aforementioned low bridge was now passable at speed, with no checks necessary. Adam, the Skipper’s mate, entertained us with some Bobby Darin numbers (a tune that stayed in Oscar’s head and mine for some time).

Mat grabbed this shot of me…nicely done

Some of the wine that we sampled…

Dinner tonight was in Vivace, an Italian restaurant on Bennett Street. I enjoyed a Caesar salad con pollo followed by espresso. It seems that Caesar salad is the same in Spanish, English and Italian.

I became a tiramisu salesman – I noted that the owner had placed his tiramisu at the back of the display cabinet. My careful marketing skills came in to play: “move them to the front and you’ll sell more”…within seconds of him moving them forwards, he sold five portions. I’m in the wrong job, marketers beware, I’m coming to get ya.

I sat myself at the head of the table, through luck more than anything else.  Oscar, from Chile, was sat next to me. Oscar and I spent much of the dinner exchanging language tips: he gave me a lot of Spanish tips and I gave him English tips (amazing I know, but hey, people change). Katya sat next to Oscar – she is from Las Republica Dominica and as such also “habla español”. This is the way to learn the language – Oscar actually spent the bulk of the weekend sorting out each our various language concerns.

Bizarre, there we were sitting in an Italian restaurant, practicing Spanish…and English – it worked both ways.

0100 – 0930 was spent in the Dubai International airport flight connections hall. An impressive setup, very well appointed in many respects, except one. There aren’t enough seats. It’s a holding area for a lot of airlines who are ferrying their passengers further east or back home to Europe. Anyway, the Duty Free is reasonably well done, plenty of choice, and if my brief foray into the mobile ‘phone prices was anything to go by, some bargains could be had. I didn’t find the noise reducing/canceling headphones that I have been looking for, nor did I find the Seiko Divers 200m kinetic timepiece (plenty of other flavours, but not that one).

Not surprisingly, this brief stopover (it didn’t feel brief at the time!) in an Arab speaking environment took me back to my five years in Libya. Sadly all I could remember of the language were a handful of the numbers (both spoken and written). It seems however, that the UAE is like most of Europe, English is commonplace. Memories that I did not realise I had came flooding back: the sound of a gentleman “clearing” his throat in the washrooms, wow! And the ladies, some with their ill-fitting shoes, often one or two sizes too small. The black outfits, some covering themselves head to toe, others being a lot more brazen. One thing that is very different about the women here: most of them are carrying mobile ‘phones. Perhaps the women in Libya are too?

The airport itself seems to be huge. It took us about 10 minutes on a coach to get from the aircraft to the terminal building. The Emirates fleet is huge, hence the size of the airport perhaps? Because of the size of the fleet, there’s no room for inefficiency – everything seems to run rather smoothly, very efficient. Internal transport for the elderly, the infirm, woman with children and the downright lazy takes the form of 4-seater electric golf buggy-like devices. Thankfully the airport has aircon – it was 36c outside last night at 0100 when we arrived.

I must be wearing my invisible clothes again. People just seem to “not see” me and end up walking through me. My lack of visible presence also means that it is me who ends up weaving in and out of crowds. I don’t see anybody else doing this. Similarly, I could be looking at the Seiko watch display or the Citizen display and somebody will walk in front of my view – something that happens when I’m shopping in Tesco too. I usually stand back from displays and shelves of food…so that I can see what’s on offer. It’s usually very obvious what I’m doing, yet folks still walk in front of my view, interrupting what I’m doing for their own gain. It’s very selfish, but I don’t think folks realise that they are doing it.

Glasgow to Dubai – Boeing 777-300 Extended Range (ER) with Emirates own Information Communication Entertainment (ICE) system including a 9″ screen in each headrest installed. Sweet. A seemingly endless supply of visual delights including films, comedy, sport, cartoons, etc. followed by some classic [Atari] games like Missile Attack/Command, Tetris, Chess and some 30 or so others. E-mail and SMS services were available at a cost, hence I did not partake in the activity (partly because I haven’t bothered to setup an e-mail address for WordPress posts as yet). It was a powerful aircraft, albeit the power came from just two engines – two rather large engines though.  

I traveled on the Wednesday after Thursday the UK security services discovered the plot to use liquid explosives on flights to the USA.  Luckily I was allowed to take my laptop into the cabin (even though it is a Dell, a Dell with a good [Sony] battery I might add!)  I also took my generic MP3 player, loaded with material from DNR and various other podcasting sources.

The flight duration was nearly 8 hours. I had my usual aisle seat, the middle seat was vacant and the window seat was filled by Graham of AXIS. Graham has worked in Dubai for the last 15 years, and like me, he struggles to understand the customer service ethos in the UK. Anyway, the flight, it quite literally flew by.

Upon arrival in Dubai I was stunned at the size of the Emirates fleet, more so when I realised just how many 777s are in their fleet: virtually every jetway we passed on the way to the transit lounge had a 777 of some description parked up. Awesome.

Anyway, the transit lounge was to be my home for the next few hours, from 0100 until 1000.

Dubai Duty Free had some interesting tourist stuff…

And some nostalgic soft drinks…so cheap too

Update, 09/06/2011
As luck would have it, there is now a startup called prodcast! If you arrived here looking for http://prodca.st/, please feel to mosey on over there and have a look around!

Prodcast is a website where you can comment on the products you love and share them with your friends on Facebook and Twitter.

Read more: http://www.killerstartups.com/Web20/prodca-st-review-the-products-you-buy

I’m a little confused. I like the sound of the word Prodcast as used by The IW Center here. But over at the QSNews/BCIS here, it seems it’s something differently completely.

To me, I believe that a Prodcast (if we must have another word for it) is something akin to a product demonstration delivered using the same technologies as a blogcast (i.e. a mix of audio and video).

Comments or thoughts?