I am a thirty something married gay boy living in Sydney, almost on top of the gay scene but not in it!
Why Sometimes blue?, because I love blue, but also I am sometimes blue :)
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So far I have been ignored, walked away from, shoved and generally treated rudely by the very people who depend on the tourism dollar.
It may seem incredible, but actually giving someone a menu in a restaurant, or taking there order within 30 minutes of sitting down is in the rest of the world normal.
I do find the whole attitude thing of many of the people working in Paris in the service industry to be laughable. Yes Paris has a lot going for it, the museums and monuments are amazing but the service (or lack thereof) ethic really lets the entire place down.
We have one full day left in paris tomorrow and then I am off to the south of the UK for a couple of days and the boy is off to the US where I will meet him this time next week.
We are hoping the weather is better tomorrow as we will do the Eiffel Tower and have a final standard tourist experience!
I am now in the legendary city of Paris home of The Louvre, Palais de Versailles and so far the rudest service staff I have met in years!
But before I talk about Paris I wanted to talk about Oulu.
Waiting for my flight to leave for Oulu Airport I looked at the Departures board and it did make me giggle a bit. It would seem that there is no other destination from Oulu than Helsinki :)
I must admit that as the plane took off from the airport it hit me that I was not going to see the girls again for a few years and I did shed more than a few tears. It's funny how people come into your life for a short time but you stay in contact with them over the years and they become very close friends.
Landing in Finland last week it really did not feel like it was five years since I last saw the girls, it really felt like it was only a few weeks or months. I won't get to sappy but they really do go out of their way every time I see them and make sure I have a fantastic time!
*wipes away tears*
But back to Oulu and some really interesting observations about the place. This was my third trip to Oulu, I have been there now twice in Autumn and once in the dad of winter. I do love the place and the extreme differences between Australia and I suppose a large city to this decidedly small city.
One of the results of being so far North in the World is both the climate and surroundings and what this represents! Oulu is very pretty and at this time of year there is an intense yellow as the trees all turn and this amazing display of colour is everywhere.
Oulu is very flat which for me coming from Sydney which is very hilly really unusual. Berry picking int he forest with the dogs Hiski and Jalo (who I totally fell in Love with) was really cool! But at times unsettling for me as I would have been lost in two minutes without the girls as there was no higher point of reference for me to look at.
Something really interesting about Oulu and Finland in general is the influence of Russian architecture and design in the buildings. Oulu especially is very Russian in it's influences of the buildings with very strong angular straight lines. There was a huge property boom int he seventies to house the population explosion and much of these buildings are in a very Russian style of box like with small windows.
A really fascinating historical throwback is the Nuclear bomb shelter the bottom of the girls apartment building. It makes perfect sense since the Russian border is just a scant few hundred kilometres away and in the seventies when this building was built, it was the height fo the cold war!
These days the bunker is used as for storage for apartments, but it was pointed to me that the construction of the storage cages was done in lightweight wood that could be ripped out very quickly in the case of a surprise Nuclear Attack on Russia.
You can see in the pictures the huge metal blast door which would have been slammed shut with the airtight seals around it. On the wall you can see the seal able air vents which were all perfectly serviceable as I discovered when I closed one.
The girls were amused by my interest in things like this but as I explained we just don't get things like this in Australia!
On my final night in Oulu we had dinner and drinks at one of the Girls house on the outskirts of the city. She lives in the most amazing old falling down wooden house. Her mother was a nurse who looked after the old lady whose house it was and when she died my friend was given free rent to live in the house for as long as she would like. Really fascinating with huge white boilers in every room and many of the original features of a house built in the late nineteenth century.
There is a lot more I want to describe, but I am waiting for the boy to arrive from his long flight from Australia so I will leave with a special just for the boy. This is Sari showing us where the Crappy Gay Bar is (CGB).
It’s been a pretty laid back couple of days up here in Oulu, Northern Finland. It’s such a small area city (about 120,000 people) and the lifestyle is very much different to what I am used to.
I did really want to say how fantastic the seats and service were on my Finnair Flight from Tokyo to Helsinki. It was a pretty new A340 and the business class was just fantastic. The distance between seats was huge, you almost needed to get out of your seat to touch the seat in front of you. Although they were not full lie flat seats like Qantas Business Class, with the help of a small sleeping pill I had a great sleep. It will be really intetesting to see how the service and seats stack up on the flight to Paris, the UK to Helsinki and next week to New York.
But back to Oulu and the weekend!
For a start the city centre is quite small, but manages to have a pub at least every ten metres of so. Now I am not saying that I am drinking any alcohol but OMG let’s just say I have seen the inside of a few of these pubs.
From past visits up here to Oulu, we have been told about the Crappy Gay Bar (names by us CGB). You would think this being a University city (world famous university in fact, The patent for Text messaging is from Oulu University as are the Fitness Heart Rate monitors (Polar.fi) and more) that there would be a vibrant gay life up here.
But oh no!
On Saturday night after a night of drinking at another wine bar in downtown Oulu I begged to go to the CGB, I just had to have a look at this place (yes I had been pre warned).
At three in the morning on their busiest night (they only open on Friday and Saturday nights) there were a total of a dozen people in the club. And one of them was the requisite blonde twinky swishy thing too!
I laughed so hard I actually fell over outside (or that may have been the alcohol I’m not really sure).
Eariler in the evening I was trying to explain to someone why I wanted to go and have a look. I knew it was bad, but I needed to see and experience just how really bad it was. I was later told that the gay scene is more private up here and there are large private parties where everyone meets and mixes, and most people go to the regular bars and clubs anyway.
Needless to say Sunday I was feeling slightly under the weather, although we did manage to go walking in the forest!
My internet connectivity woes are continuing but I am learning to live without being connected 24x7, although I dread to think what my mobile telephone bill will be like when I have finished the trip (it can get up one dollar a minute for me to call out!).
I have however been keeping up with the gossip back in Sydney, hearing today that Lumiere has been cancelled as one of the team (either Brett or Andy) are extremely sick. I have heard more on the rumor mill but I refuse to elaborate as it is not confirmed.
On other news from back home the boy who has spent the last five nights at home by himself (usually it is me who is home alone as he travels) has been letting the puppy sleep on the bed with him! This is just unprecedented and very cute, as she is normally not even allowed upstairs unless for a quick visit to wake one of us up!
An event has occurred in the cold war which may trigger a reconciliation between myself and the friend, but I will not be holding my breath, nor will I be all that open to the reconciliation unless there is an apology.
But I highly doubt that!
I must admit that there is a bit of schadenfreude in me about this situation, and I know that it’s not quite the right thing to feel.
So today being my last full day in Finland, we will be taking the dogs to the Forest and I will finally get to pick berries (or watch the lesbians do it anyway LOL). Then taking the girls out for lunch and having dinner tonight at one of our other friend’s places up here.
Tomorrow afternoon I am off to Paris where I have a night on my own and then the boy meets me on Thursday morning.
I am so looking forward to seeing the boy as I have not seen him since he left for Singapore well over a week and a half ago. So as you can imagine I am very excited!
The woes of trying to stay connected while travelling are hilarious.
Although the girls have an Internet Connected computer they are not quite as obsessed with the web as we are (the boy and I, I mean). Consequently they do not have a wireless network or a network that I can actually hack into.
So instead I am relying on the local free wireless access provided by the town, but to get this access I need to have the computer aimed at just the right angle on top of the sofa or on the table in the living room at just the correct angle.
But the damn connection keeps on dropping out and so I get this weird in and out access.
But as I battle that small woe, I am having a fabulous time!
I am using the girls coputer as I still need to get a converter so I can charge my own notebook computer, so I am trying to use a weird key board and everything is in Finnish!
I have to say that having full sleeper seats all the way from Sydney to Helsinki and then having to be jammed into a small a320 airbus with only one class configuration awas a total shock to the system. Sitting on the ailse I was constantly being banged by the trolley as it went up and down and by the end of the 45 minute flight from Helsinki to Oulu I was ready to slap the cabin crew member that was doing it!
But onto far more important things though!
Finland and in particular Oulu is as beautiful as I remember them it´s that time of year when the trees are an amazing vibrant mass of yellows, greens and oranges for as far as the eye can see. It is fantastic to se the girls for the first time in over five years and it feels a bit like it was yesterday the last time we saw them.
Their two new whippets are quite amazing and I have particuarly fallen in love with Jalo who I would love to take home and introduce to Lucy (I am sure they would get onlike a house on fire).
Hiski is so beautiful too but he is far more reserved and stately LOL.
This mornng we all even went to the gym - me for the first time in quite a while which was great for me.
Anyway off to go into the town center to meet up with Maarit and Jonna who I have not seen in ages either!
Pictures and more will come later when I am back on my own computer!
The picture is of Oulu Cathederal which I can see perfectly from the girls apartment!
After three flights and nearly thirty hours of travelling, I am here, with the girls in deepest darkest Finland! The view is from their apartment and these are their two Whippets Hiski and Jalo (aslo known as JLO)
More to come tomorrow but I am jet lagged and generally fucked!
I am waiting for my flight from Tokyo to Helsinki which should be in about another two hours or so.
I have quite a few comments about the trip thus far, in particular the total stupidity of not being able to buy contact lenses solution thourgh Sydney Airport Security, and not being able to buy the required container of less than 100mls before hand!
Damn damn damn stupidity!
Anyway only another 16 odd hours of travel till I get to my next destination.
Oh and the First Class Lounge here has blocked Superdrewby as Pornography! What the fuck is that about!
In just a few short hours (well over twelve in fact) my holiday begins! Tonight I will fly from Sydney, transiting through Tokyo, Helsinki to end up in Northern Finland in a small city called Oulu. Where I will meet up with the Finnish Lesbians and their two whippets!
Realistically my trip is going to be quite boring to most people, especially my readers, but it's my blog and I am going to comment on it the whole way hehehehe
I am so bloody excited only one day to go till my holidays!
Now I did get an email from one of the Girls who I am staying with in Finland and it would seem that one of the activities she has planned for me is...
Berry Picking in the forest!
And there are bears in the forest too!
I know it sounds weird but I am so looking forward to doing something as silly as this!
Now if I do see a bear what the hell do I do? It's not like a kangaroo which will just hop away from people. These are huge big wild bears which could tear you limb from limb in a heart beat.
Well all right I am being a bit over dramatic, but hey this my blog and I am allowed to be dramatic LOL!
On other notes last night I had Gus and Adam over for a meal of pasta, we were supposed to go out but the builder was doing some last minute things at home and I was not sure what time he was leaving.
It was great meeting them both properly, and not in a club or pub. One of the most bizarre things about last night was finding out that both Gus and I were in the same Opera production with the Australian Opera, literally ten years apart (well I am ten years older) .
Oh and by the way thank you again ADAM for saying I looked 25, if I could smile with all this botox I would smile (joking there has not yet been any botox!).
Anyway I have bucket loads of work to get done today and I have a coffee with young Dan today as well! So much to do so little time and I still have not even started packing!
My main web host has been upgrading their servers the last couple of days which meant that this and other sites all went down or went 'wonky'.
I really hate it when people or businesses do not provide the service for which you either pay for or are expecting. I am a real stickler for people 'doing the right thing', whether that be providing even the basic level of customer service or service without a scowl.
In the case of my Internet Service Provider I have used them for about 6 years and have often had problems, but not as many problems as my previous provider. So I have stayed with them, but over the last year the level of service has dropped like a rocket with my site and client sites etc being down on average more than any of my otehr providers.
There are extenuating circumstances at play underlying the problems that they are having but it's getting annoying!
I didn't end up going to the Funeral on Friday, instead I did go the wake afterwards at Will and Toby's. Which I was very happy that I had gone, especially since it was a bit of a mind fuck for me seeing people I had not seen for years.
It's funny how so many people intersect in someones life and you never know until the end. it was a bit like that for me.
I ran into my cousins best friend from 20 years ago, Tim is pretty damn well known having won the Academy Award for Costume design for Priscilla Queen of the Dessert in 1994. It was fun catching up with someone who I only vaguely knew as a kid (and a young one at that).
What was the total mind fuck for me was when I discovered that one of Phillip's cats was the son of my aunt's cat.
How weird is that!
I am convinced that in the gay world everyone knows everyone it's just such a a damn small world!
One nice thing that came out of the wake is that I finally confronted my friend over the cold war we have been having. As thought out I was right and it was all about perception of things and not actual things.
*sigh
It will still be an awful long time before the friendship is repaired though.
Only Three days to go till I head off overseas and I am trying to get everything complete!
JOHN Howard has told his partyroom gay and lesbian couples should not be given the same rights as defacto heterosexual couples.
Mr Howard was responding to backbencher Warren Entsch, who asked him to make a quick decision on the issue cabinet left to the Prime Minister's discretion three weeks ago.
Mr Howard told Mr Entsch in the Liberal partyroom meeting yesterday that the issue was "complicated" and he did not believe in giving gays and lesbians equal treatment.
Moderate federal Liberal MPs, including Mr Entsch, fellow Queenslander Peter Lindsay and Victorian Greg Hunt, have for the past two years pushed colleagues to end the legal discrimination of same-sex couple in key areas, such as superannuation and public service pensions.
The Australian Christian Lobby has been campaigning to stop the Howard Government and the Labor Opposition from granting same-sex couples full defacto relationship status.
Following a heated discussion in cabinet late last month, Mr Howard decided to make the final ruling on whether gays and lesbians would be given equal rights under commonwealth law. Conservative ministers had argued it was not a high priority and that they had been inundated by opposition to major reform.
Ministers were also concerned at the expense of reforms - millions of dollars in extra social security payments.
But Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Employment Minister Joe Hockey, Defence Minister Brendan Nelson and Attorney-General Philip Ruddock supported the reforms. Mr Turnbull and Mr Hockey are understood to have argued that with large numbers of gay voters in their Sydney electorates, Wentworth and North Sydney, reform could not be put off. The package includes equal access to the Medicare safety net and the couples' rate threshold for the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
Under current laws, married or de facto heterosexual couples without children qualify for the 80per cent rebate under the Medicare safety net after reaching $716 in out-of-pocket expenses between them. A Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission report reveals 58 federal laws deny same-sex couples and families basic financial and work-related entitlements.
A friend came into my office today to tell me that a friend / acquaintance of ours had passed away on Monday night after a long drawn out battle with illnesses over a fifteen year period.
Phillip had managed to not just cheat death so many times, battling four rounds of bowel cancer and the horrible operations that go along with it, but also in the last year throat cancer.
I had not seen him in a few months, at his request when he was finally sent to a hospice he refused for anyone to go and see him at his worst. He much rather wanted for people to remember his at his best acting his worst!
It's been coming and it's not sad the cats have a new home and his service and wake on Friday will be a who's who of the famous, infamous, not so famous and the extraordinary people that seemed to filter in and out of his life.
So Goodbye Philip, I am sure you will be running around having a splendid time wherever you are.
I have been trying to find some time all week to sit down and write more than a couple of lines on the fantastic time we had on the weekend (starting Thursday night).
The weekend started on Thursday night when we went with the English One to Home Nightclub for a Homesexual Party! It was a total blast and it turned into a bit of a Sydney Bloggers meet up too, with the very sexy Gus there (and yes he even took his shirt off and danced with me!) and rather sexy Margeaux both making appearances.
Although Anthony Callea did perform I was entertaining elsewhere chatting and dancing so missed said pint sized performance. Now I did hear it and now have seen it on Youtube and I must say I am glad I did not bother battling the crowds to actually watch it.
But fear not as the early morning light started to filter in we left Home Nightclub and had to WALK from Cockle bay back up the Oxford street. Obviously due to the APEC madness there was nary a taxi to be seen, but you can imagine that the streets where littered with Police who were rather bemused watching a whole gaggle of poofters wandering through the city.
After a short break at home to shower and change we then went into stage two, Day Recovery at Manacle. Now for those of you not from Sydney Manacle is about as grungy, dirty down market as you can get and I love the place!
The English One came with me and half way through the morning Nick came and met me too. I love this place and will be very sad once it closes, but of course more to the point where the hell will we go for more early morning recovery when we certainly don't want to be home and still need to be out?
Sometime after about midday I dragged myself home, the English one had bunked off with a straight boy hours before and I was in desperate need of some sleep.
After about an hour or two of sleep the boy and I headed out for a quick bevvy with friends before heading to a private recovery party over at the Horizon with the very fun Nick from Californication and other associated friends, acquaintances and eye candy, ahem I mean people!
I did try and get some pictures of Nick and I , but all we ended up with was some blurry shots that look more like a small nuclear bomb going off than Nick and I.
The Recovery was a total; hoot with lots and lots of alcohol and dancing around at one stage in our underwear! It made perfect sense at the time thank you!
So some time Saturday morning the boy and I finally went home and went to bed, totally exhausted and I still feel it now!
It was fantastic spending some time with some fellow bloggers and it's been really nice getting to know both Margeaux and Gus. Unfortunately Adam was not feeling well so had gone home earlier int he evening which was a shame because I have only briefly met Adam!
But Gus and I have promised that we will catch up either before I head overseas or after and we can introduce the puppy dogs together too!
So tomorrow is a week till my holidays start and I still have at least three weeks worth of work to get done before then!
I do think the classic comment of the weekend has to come from Margeaux, who told me I was a bad influence on NickLOL,
I am up to my ears in work and putting out small bush fires, in the meantime one of my work colleagues spent a weekend in Japan and bought a present for the beagle!
Doesn't she just look so happy and sweet!
The much longer post on the weekends trashiness will follow very soon indeed!
I am sitting waiting for my flight back to Sydney which is about three hours away due to the wonders of flying on separate airlines with the boy.
But at least through the wonders of technology I can sit here on my trusty notebook computer and my net connect card, surfing the web and blogging all from some God Forsaken bar in Coolangatta airport.
I would normally be in the Qantas lounge, but since the boy flew out already and he is the uber status member I have no real choice but to site here and wait it out.
It does however allow me some time to out my thoughts together on what I think of the Gold Coast / Sunshine Coast!
In a word this place is tacky and not suitable for anything when it's raining and cold.
I can well and truly see the appeal when it is warm, the beaches just go on forever and the eye candy even in clothes is just fantastic so I can only assume how great it is when the surfy boys are out!
Seriously though this place seems to be a mix of really 80s inspired and really new like the tallest residential tower in the Southern Hemispehere Q1.
But overall this place is a party town and 'surfers paradise'. It feels a bit like a mix of Sydney and Darlinghurst where we live, but with a wanna be Miami, Vegas and LA all rolled into one.
It's been a welcome break the last few days, being away from the normalcy of work, different scenery and a different routine, but as always I am looking forward to going home, sleeping in my own bed and seeing my little baby beagle.
I am currently surrounded by a whole lot of very drunk business men and a very hot young guy with them about 25 - 27 or so who is very obviously gay but I don't think the older guys in his company he is travelling with know this.
But I digress and back to my impressions of the gold coast.
I think the highlight of my ramblings yesterday was most likely walking by Cheerleaders a Gold Coast strip joint, right next to an English language school.
As I walked out a young Asian girl walked out of the language school and right into the strip club!
Totally classic!
Well while writing this blog entry I have managed to down two ibuprofen (I buggered my back) and two pure blonde low carb beers, and I am kind of flying so I am amazed that I can even sit on this bloody bar stool.
So from Coolangatta airport with two and a half hours till my flight out of here, I sign off!
Being away for a few days of pseudo holidays when you run a business is a bit like being in limbo. On the one hand I am still taking and making phone calls to clients and sub contractors.
But I am not really doing much work per se.
I have a To Do List of things I should have done either last week or over the weekend, but I don't really want to be working.
On the one hand I know that I really need some time off (yeah so why am I on my computer you ask?). But on the other hand I do still need to do things, and yes it's a small business which does mean if I totally divorce myself of the day to day issues things will fall apart or at least make small messes!
So in order ot have a holiday I did go to Dreamworld yesterday while the boy played golf. Now for those of you not in sunny Australia and have never heard of Dreamworld it is sort of like a smaller tackier version of Disneyland.
It's one great big claim to fame was that it's the venue for Big Brother. Apart from the four rides we did yesterday (where I got soaked all the way through) we did wander around the Big Brother house.
Whilst the house was interesting on a superficial level it was also quite fascinating to see just how small the entire compound actually was. I have enough issues with anxiety and sometimes feeling trapped, but the thought of being in that house made me feel anxious.
I mean apart from the fact that you are on TV (which I used to love as a teenager and have been on lots of shows etc) you have virtually no privacy, no say and no control.
When I say the house and compound is small I mean tiny. But when you walk around the crew area where the cameras all were and realise just how little privacy they had at all it is quite shocking! The perception of privacy is kind of there when you are in the house by the use of the mirrors, but having walked in through the crew area and then into the house itself you are acutely aware of just how much you are in the spotlight.
This morning I had a nice relaxing massage and this afternoon I plan to wander to some shops and see what's around! The view is from our balcony on a day that is very much not like what the Gold Coast is supposed to be like - Raining!
Oh well I was planning on getting some rays by the pool but I think instead I am going to be doing some window shopping instead!
On the weekend we were invited to Margeaux's repeated 27th Birthday party which was a total hoot! The party was great fun as you can see above both Margeaux and I were most definitely a few sheets to the wind.
In fact I was told off twice for being rowdy.
In incident one I put my butchest voice on and screamed at some friends down on the street, Unfortunately I didn't realise that a security guard was downstairs and I was told off twice, once by the security guard and the second time by the host :)
The second incident involved me throwing ice off the balcony - I just have no idea what came over me!
But maybe it was the great group of friends that Margeaux has that made me lose my common sense. The illustrious Nick from Californication was there too which is always a pleasure. I really do love eclectic groups of people at parties it's really cool to meet all types of people not just the 'regulars'.
And we will be seeing Margeaux at Homosexual this coming Thursday night too!
No if you are very lucky there is one of the worst picture of me ever on Margeaux's camera, it shows me in my campy silly self, hands in some horrible campy expression LOL, so if you need to see this hassle Margeaux LOL!
We are off to the Gold Coast today for a few days to escape the APEC madness and have a bit of R&R in between working from a different location.
My 3 Net connect card is plugged into my trusty Sony Vaoi, my mobile is charged and I am excited!
The puppy is in doggy day care at Rose's and has been there since yesterday afternoon and I miss the little miss already, but I know that she will be fine and happy!
I am a thirty something married gay boy living in Sydney, almost on top of the gay scene but not in it!
Why Sometimes blue?, because I love blue, but also I am sometimes blue :)
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