Living Down Under

Thai whisky, underground Viet Cong tunnels and the biggest adventure of my life

If you followed my travels in an earlier posting I made about my Australian genesis, incorporating my travels from London, through the Thai jungle near the Myanmar border where I lived with native Karen tribes in their village, on to Cambodia where I marvelled at the ancient temples of Angkor Wat, through Vietnam where I visited Agent Orange victims in their workshops and squeezed through the underground tunnels used by the Viet Cong in Cu Chi. I dived with turtles of the coast of Ao Nang and snorkelled with angel fish shoals. I got sea sick on a clapped out speed boat miles off the coast of James Bond island, swung from ropes tied on to rickety bamboo platforms 20 metres above the raging Mekong river in Laos and most importantly scored four goals for the rest of the world team against the Pakse village side in a 9-6 barefoot soccer match on a dirt pitch which had an open sewer meandering across the halfway line. I ate octopus, frog, deep fried crickets, snake and ‘mystery meat on a skewer’. I trekked through jungles and bathed under waterfalls. Drank sang-sum buckets (an extremely potent cocktail which mixes Thai extra strength Red Bull syrup with coca-cola and Thai whisky served in a child’s sand bucket and drunk through a straw) with British, French and German backpackers in a Rasta bar, only drawing the line to new experience when the Thai guides started offering pure opium round the group! All this intense exotica pales into significance with what happened on arrival in Balmain, an inner west suburb of Sydney .

 

My girlfriend and I had travelled down the east coast of Australia visiting obscure towns on the way, and living out of a camper van for a month. This really is the promised land! The beaches are incredible with clean sands and warm oceans. The strength of the waves crashing onto the shore and scale of the sea makes you realise how insignificant you are in comparison to what else it out there. We were that far removed from city life at this point that the stars are as bright as spot lights, winking from the heavens. There is no light pollution or smog up in Queensland . We traced the coastline, roving through banana and pineapple plantations. As we neared Sydney and civilisation, my anticipation grew of what would meet me. I can clearly remember trundling down the Pittwater Road from the northern beaches where we now live and coming round the corner from Neutral Bay to lay eyes on Sydney Harbour Bridge for the first time. It was like driving onto a film set: the bridge arcing into the vast cityscape with the Opera House crouched down to the left framing the skyscrapers in between with ferries delivering commuters like bees buzzing between full blooms.

 

We crossed the Anzac Bridge and drove into the hiving suburb of Balmain, parking up on the harbour side, fizzing with excitement. We had completed our journey which started at the end of June, almost three months and eight countries ago.

 

I couldn’t wait to explore the city and was eager to wet my dry throat and the many bars which beckoned me in with the promise of ice cold XXXX, Pure Blonde, Carlton Draught and Tooheys. I had a whole new drinks menu to sample. We got a bite to eat and picked up the essentials. I had always gone by the old adage that the best way to get to know a new place is to get a drink, buy the local newspaper and see what is going on below the headlines. I pinned a couple of longnecks and leafed through the Sydney Morning Herald and turned to ask my girlfriend what a Bogan was only to find her slumped in a coma like stupor. I shook her awake and she cast her eye around the room. Only minutes had passed and she felt like she had been in the deepest of sleeps. We wrote it off to the huge amount of driving we had taken and went to bed.

 

The next night the same thing happened, during the 7 o’clock evening news and the night after that. We were apartment hunting and had another hectic day running round looking for business suits, recruitment agents and ferry timetables. I was now recovered from the travels and had my business head back on, eager to find gainful employment and through myself into the Sydney life. My girlfriend was still conking out early evening, leaving me to watch TV shows about celebrities I didn’t know and news reports places I hadn’t heard of. We finally decided that she should visit a doctor to see what was wrong. We had secured an apartment or unit as they are called here in a modern building with a swimming pool, gym and sauna. I was living the dream. I had heard back from several companies who were eager to meet me regarding job offers. I had even arranged to meet someone from Northern Ireland who had offered to show me round and who shared my passion for football. My girlfriend’s phone rang. It was a Friday afternoon. The voice on the other end introduced herself as the doctor’s receptionist. The doctor had finished early for the weekend, but he had left a message to say, Yes you are pregnant. That was the first day of the biggest adventure of our lives.

Tsunami Part 2 - New York at risk of mega tsunami

When I was asked where I wanted to live, if money and visas were no object, I had two places in mind, Sydney or New York. I have been to New York three times. Once in my late teens when I stayed on Times Square in a wonderful hotel with my best mate from school. We staggered around Manhattan, our jaws scraping the sidewalk in awe of the incredible people, buildings, cultural references and settings straight out of our television. I was amazed by the scale, the sights, the smell and the deafening 24 hour noise - sirens, horns, shouting in various tongues and rattling air conditioning units. I loved every minute of it. It was like living in a Scorcese movie. I kept expecting de Niro to walk round the corner.

I went back when my dad retired and took the whole family. I loved it again and saw lots of new sights. I returned for a third time in 2004 to coach field hockey for a few weeks at a high school and play a few friendlies with the Rye Club up in the Bronx. I spent some time in Jersey City and a couple of weeks sight seeing in Manhattan. I love the city, but I don't know how anyone holds down a job. There is so much going on, work would get in the way. It's so vibrant and so full of life. My third visit was difficult as it was the only one I had made since 9/11.

One night after a narrow victory over Greenwich Field Hockey we went out to a Hungarian bar in the Bronx, on to club in Chelsea, on to a late night jazz club in the Village, where we managed to see a string of stars who had high tailed it from an awards ceremony in Queens. The crowd went wild, but none of us knew who anyone was! One of the ladies liked my accent and bought my drinks and danced with me for a while. I have absolutely no idea who she was. She thought I was a European ice hockey star, so I didn't want to disappoint her. Drink and tiredness got the better of me and before I could say goodbye I was whisked down a steep flight of stairs by  my team mates and into the fresh air. We purloined one of the stretch limos that had just dropped more stars off. The driver said he had finished his shift, but seeing as he was Irish (he looked more Nigerian!) he would drive us back to Jersey and stop off to get more drinks for us at a Korean drugstore, if we didn't mind the untidyness in the limo. The entire team piled into the back and out of the sunroof. It was now going on for 4 in the morning, but we soon livened up when the champagne came out. Our new driver friend took us up 5th Avenue, showed us the Empire State Building, Wall Street, Mayor Gulliani's offices and then pulled up at a large fence with a bull statue and informed us that this was Ground Zero. There were large arch lights and flowers and pictures of lost loved ones pinned to the fence. I sobered up immediately. Some of the guys wanted their photo taken on top of the bull. I felt very uncomfortable and wanted to leave immediately. I don't know why I had developed such a bond with the city.

Several months later, I was at home in Belfast and was flicking through the channels when a documentary came on about volcanoes and Gran Canaria came up. I had just come back from Gran Canraia on holiday with a group of friends and had climbed Cumbre Vieja and was astounded at its scale. What came next in the documentary sent a chill up my spine. I was aware that Cumbre Vieja was dormant, but not extinct..... It appears that the Canary Islands, off the north west coast of Africa were formed after siesmic shifts and volcanic eruptions created the islands. A scientist was talking about stratovolcanoes and the prediction of mega tsunami. The scientist had lots of letters after his name as well as being a Professor of something I couldn't understand. He was explaining his model following the generation of mega tsunami from massive flank collapses of the Cumbre Vieja volcano on the island of La Palma and of the volcano of Kilauea, on the island of Hawaii. The Professor speculated as to whether the volcanoes at La Palma and Kilauea would erupt, destroying the islands, causing the entire landmass to fall into the ocean, if this were to occur in the near future and whether they could generate mega tsunamis. They would and the enormous tidal waves created would travel across the Atlantic at tremendous speed and slam into the Carribean and up to 20 kilometres inland on the East Coast if America. AND THERE'S NOTHING ANYONE CAN DO ABOUT IT.

Tsunami: Part 1 - Tongan subterranean earthquake and the ghost tsunami

California is long overdue "the big one". The predicted super-earthquake which may break the record for most catastrophic earthquake, currently held by Valdivia, Chile in 1960 which peaked at 9.5. Going back to Boxing Day 2004, the Sumatran subterraean earthquake measured 9.3 on the richter scale and caused massive devestation. Just yesterday, a major 7.9-magnitude earthquake shook the South Pacific nation of Tonga, prompting a tsunami warning but causing no major damage. The quake, which hit at 7.17am local time, was centred 210km south-southeast of the Tongan capital Nuku'alofa. An undersea volcano is erupting near Tonga, shooting smoke and ash hundreds of metres into the sky above the south Pacific Ocean. Check out the photos online. It is incredible. The US Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre issued a tsunami warning for Tonga, Niue, the Kermadec Islands, American Samoa and Fiji, but lifted it nearly two hours after the quake struck. In Fiji , the authorities warned people in coastal areas to move to higher ground and schools along the coast were closed. Many businesses and government offices stayed closed until after the warning was lifted. In New Zealand , the Ministry of Civil Defence also issued a tsunami advisory for all coastal regions soon after the earthquake. But the tsunami warning was lifted after there were no reports of any significant rise in sea levels. The warning centre said after cancelling the tsunami alert that only a minor rise in sea level of around four centimetres was recorded by sea level gauges in the South Pacific nation of Niue .

I won't even being to try and explain why there wasn't widespread devestation from this quake, but what I do know is that....we could be next. Sydney WILL be hit by a massive tsunami. It's just a case of when. I work on the 32nd floor of Chifley Tower, but the Harbour Bridge, the transport infrastructures and most businesses would be wiped out. Obviously, being a harbour city, the most beautiful I have seen, is at sea level. One major quake, and this is very possible as tectonic plates rub just off the north east coast of New Zealand's north island and a huge tsunami would wipe out most of the Eastern seaboard. Thankfully I don't live right on the beach, but up a bit of a hill about five minutes walk inland. I could have a nice seaside view if things were to go badly wrong.

Why the Irish wear green

The story of why Irish wear green if closely linked to the legend of St Patrick. Surprise surprise.....

As I said in an earlier posting, Patrick was actually Welsh. He was born in the second half of the fifth century and was captured by Irish raisers who crossed the Irish sea to pillage what they could. In his late teens, Patrick was enslaved and sent to work on the land as a herdsman, on Mount Slemish, just outside Ballymena in County Antrim, remaining a captive for six years. After six years he heard a voice telling him that he would soon go home, and then that his ship was ready. Fleeing his master, he travelled to a port, two hundred miles away he says, where he gained passage back to Wales, which was a journey of epic proportions back then. I have made the journey many times and my brother attended university in North Wales and often complained about the ferry crossings.

St. Patrick is buried at Down Cathedral in Downpatrick in County Down, alongside St. Brigid and St. Columba. Downpatrick is now a small market town with a St Patrick’s visitors centre. Its only other claim to fame is that it is the home of rock band Ash, who I would recommend if you haven’t heard them. However, Tim, Mark and Rick now live in Manhattan and are enjoying the finer things in life, having moved on from the Green Dragon Chinese restaurant in High Street and drinking cider in the surrounding fields.

Legend has it that Patrick explained the concept of the father, the son and the Holy Ghost were one and the same God, using a shamrock, which is a green three leafed clover. The shamrock is considered to be the symbol of Ireland and is on the Irish rugby and soccer shirts as a national symbol.

St Patrick’s Day is celebrated on 17^th March, which is said to be the date of Patrick’s death. For most of Christianity's first thousand years, canonisations were done on the diocesan or regional level. Relatively soon after the death of people considered to be very holy people, the local church affirmed that they could be liturgically celebrated as saints. As a result, St. Patrick has never been formally canonised by a Pope.

If you have ever been to Ireland or seen anything filmed there, you will know it invariably rains. I suppose this is one of the reasons I left. Certainly there were a number of factors affecting my decision, but I was surprised just how much of a bearing climate has on peoples’ mood. The stereotype of Irish people are happy cheery bunch, always up for “the craic” is inextricably linked to alcohol. When I went back to visit with my young daughter I was shocked to see how much of an impact alcohol has on life there. I suppose it is a northern European phenomenon, where it gets dark early and the weather is cold. The only thing to do is stay indoors. Australia has a fantastic climate which lends itself well to the outdoors lifestyle my family now enjoy. Ireland ’s cooler climate and heavy rainfall lends itself well to growing vegetation. If you have ever flown over Ireland, it is a beautifully green country – hence the Emerald Isle monicker and probably the reason Ireland is linked to the colour green, which has the Chicago synthetic dye companies rubbing their hands every March.

IQ, EQ, VQ?

I was just sent an email from a friend I used to play hockey with asking me to take a quiz which would give me my IQ. I took the test and was given an IQ rating of over 140 - Very good.

This pleased me, but then I thought, there must be more to it than this. Then I twigged - I bet this has sent my email address to some computer somewhere and I am destined to receive spam emails inviting me to purchase prescription drugs at rock bottom prices and herbal Viagra.

I took an IQ test at school and had to fill in my address for some testing. It seemed standard enough and then a month later I received an official looking envelope in the post. I was in my early teens, so any mail at all for me was very exciting. Record companies used to send me stuff on bands I liked, this was the days before email, so an official brown A4 envelope was very exciting. I opened it and waded through the mountain of paperwork which must have claimed most of an amazonian rain forest. It was another IQ test from MENSA. I completed the test and turned to the letter accompanying the test. I was now to send the completed paperwork with a cheque to MENSA to get my official IQ rating and sign up to undergo more testing to see if I was a genius. Obviously the only genius was the marketing man who decided he could play on teenager and parents' vanity by snaring them with official looking envelopes and promises of genius.

I was interviewed and givenpsychoanalytical testing in the process of applying for my current job. The role required common sense, intelligence, IT literacy and EQ. I was puzzled by the EQ part so nodded knowingly as I wanted their cold hard dollars. EQ it appears is emotional intelligence rating. I have to be able to communicate with the business people and interpret analytical figures and communicate system requirements and other fairly dry stuff while still interacting with real life people who sign my pay check. A fairly obvious thing I would have thought, until I thought back to previous jobs where nerdy characters worked in IT and only spoke in Klingon or about Dungeons and Dragons. I don't claim to have half the knowledge required to build a SQL server or virtualise a network, but at least I kissed a girl when I was in my teens and didn't spend all my youth reading Lord of the Rings in a dark room.

So in today's modern celebrity obsessed culture there is a new "Q" - the VQ - vanity quotient. I'm talking to you Paris Hilton. Case closed. No more questions your honour.

Why I hate St Patrick's Day

Strange as it may seem, I hate St Patrick's Day. I was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland and spent my formative years living there.

St Patrick's Day was always hijacked by Republicans who used the day, a Christian festival, to express political opinions. The whole thing was rather pathetic, like much of what happens in Northern Ireland. The day was more memorable for the school's rugby final. The school's cup in Northern Ireland is the second oldest rubgy tournament in the world. I don't know what the oldest is, but there you go. I have always found it pathetic that these kids peak when they are 17. Much like high school american football, demonstrated best in the book and subsequent fiom, Friday Night Lights. In Northern Ireland, the schools rugby teams compete to play in the final, held every St Patrick's Day at Ravenhill, the home of Ulster Rugby. It's a big day out (and a half day off school!)

Belfast City Council tried to make the day more "family friendly" by inviting the Pogues to headline a free concert. I don't know what genius thought the Pogues, featuring Shane McGowan, the gap-toothed drunkard who drank neat vodka from the bottle on stage, in front of the aforementioned families. He then went on to slur some nonsense about getting the brits out of Ireland. The whole thing was rather unseemly.

St Patrick came across from Wales and apparently banished all the snakes from Ireland. Founded a monastry and brought Christianity to the island. That was it. No drinking, no fighting in the street, no playing fiddledy-dee music or wearing aran jumpers.

Basically, I can see better bigger cleebrations in New York, Boston and even Sydney. The CBD was closed off here on Saturday for a huge display of floats and demostrations of traditional music and gaelic football. However, as normal, the day was hijacked by politics....and Guinness.

Multi-billionaires and me

As part of my job as a business analyst at an investment bank, we get lots of journals sent to us to keep us abreast of the market. Forbes magazine this month has published its list of the richest people in the world. Bill Gates has returned to the top of the heap, overtaking Warren Buffett. The global financial meltdown wiped out $US2 trillion from the net worth of the world's billionaires. Bill is now worth US$40,000,000,000,000. Wayne Buffett, last year's richest man, fell to second place with $US37 billion, down from $US62 billion. Mexican telecommunications tycoon Carlos Slim took third place with $US35 billion, down from $US60 billion. Scarily, the article says that the typical billionaire is down at least one third on their net worth.

The richest man in Australian is Frank Lowy, who is heading up the Australian bid for the FIFA World Cups in 2018 and 2022. Lowy has an estimated net worth of $US2.7 billion, but lost $US6.4 billion since last year. Last year's highest ranked Australian, Fortescue Metals owner Andrew Forrest is now worth just $US1.9 billion, as the value of his stake in the iron ore miner slumped. Mining is big business in Australia with Rio Tinto mining and Aus Mining being massive employers, especially in Queensland and Western Australia . My girlfriend’s brother met Andrew Forrest through his business a few years ago and said he didn't have the air of a multi-billionaire about him at all. I found this quite refreshing. It's scary how money changes people. The British media was full of horror stories when the National Lottery was launched in the mid-90s. A Northern Irish bus driver won over 10 million in the Lottery and became quite the man about time, but made sure all his friends were taken care of. He also was very generous to charities and the staff at his bank! He would regularly take them all out to dinner and paid for lavish Christmas parties.

I can't afford to buy lunch.

The Colonel, his fighting cock and my spanish oral exam...

Recent happenings remind me of my Spanish A Level exams. When I was 17 years old I was in my last year at high school. At the age of 15 we do exams in nine or ten subjects at GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education). After these we get the choice of staying on at school, or leaving to start our working lives. For the more academic, we stay on to do what used to be called the A (Advanced) Levels and became GCEs, General Certificate of Education, or “Highers” if you are in Scotland . At the age of 16, you have to choose what subjects you want to specialise in. I think this is an awful lot of pressure for that age. At my school we had the option of all the subjects we studied up to GCSE with additional options of Politics, Business Studies or Economics. I am sad to admit I chose to do economics, because I thought it sounded impressive. In hindsight it was the perfect choice given my current career, but that’s just a happy accident. I chose French and Spanish which were my strongest subjects with Economics thrown in for novelty value – what was I thinking?! Up to that point, our French had been conversational and generally holiday French. We were taught how to ask for food, drinks, travel, general conversation that would serve you well in future life. Although we rarely go into shops and ask for jam or bread, with the supermarchés now spreading like viruses throughout France and swallowing up all small village shops, we simply go into the super or even larger “hypermarchés” and put what we need in our trolley. Really, you could be anywhere. I have been in very similar supermarkets in Northern Ireland , Scotland , England , Wales , France , Spain , Switzerland , Hungary and the Czech Republic , much of Europe really. It only starts getting interesting when you go into Asia and see unfamiliar products. Although with the advent of lads’ mags like FHM and Loaded young backpackers seem to find it hilarious to photograph products like “Crapp breakfast cereal” and “Kum sandwich spread” and take the time to email them in for readers amusement, so these have lost their novelty value by the time I arrived. With globalisation, there are fewer surprises and the world is a much poorer place for it. The major advantage to studying Spanish at A Level was that we got a gorgeous Spanish student to talk to for an hour a week to improve out oral skills. We were all gutted. She was the talk of the school and even though there was no chance she would ever be interested in 17 year old schoolboys who had never been out of provincial Northern Ireland , we all did our best to impress her. I gave up early on and preferred to talk about Spanish football and cinema. We got on well and she surprised me with her taste in music. She loved the bands I liked. I was shocked she had even heard of many of them, particularly Pixies (the greatest band ever) and she also spoke passionately about Red Hot Chili Peppers. This was early 90s when they were almost unheard of, outside rock clubs and the MTV awards, before they got chart friendly and their albums appeared in supermarkets. It was exciting being part of a sub-culture and my mates took a ridiculous pride in being able to know unreleased 7” singles by punk bands like the Ramones, Magazine and the Undertones or rumoured albums coming out by indie artists like Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, Pop Will Eat Itself and the Wonderstuff. Nearly all of my mates brought our school books in canvas bags elaborately decorated with hand drawn bands’ logos. Rosa displayed an impressive knowledge, but let herself down when it came to hip-hop. We also got a French student, but he was a long haired ugly bloke with a moustache.

 

The issue I had with both French and Spanish was not the pronunciation or vocabulary or even the speed. It was that we had literature in both languages to read and answer questions in English. We had to read Guy de Maupassant’s short stories which were interminably boring. One was about an umbrella and how this was the perfect metaphor for the middle classes in nineteenth century France , another was about a young clerk taking his sweetheart out on a boat and finding a dead body in the water. Dull, dull, dull. I must confess I don’t recall any of the other books I had to read, they must have been so unremarkable. Spanish however was much more exciting. The first book was a play set in the slums of Madrid in the late 50s. It was called ‘La Camisa’, meaning the shirt. It followed a family who were living in poverty having lost their jobs and moved to the country to find work. They struggled to find ‘la ilusion’ – hope. The father tried to gamble his way out of financial trouble by playing the football pools and the national lottery game. The children lost themselves in football, following the famous Real Madrid side of Di Stefano, Puskas and Gento. The family considered leaving mother Spain to chase jobs in Germany , but the mother spent her free time going through flea markets to find strips of material to make a shirt for her husband’s job interviews. The other book, which I still own, is called ‘El coronel no tiene quién le escriba’ – No-one writes to the Colonel. It was written by the Nobel Prize winning Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez and was my introduction to magic realism. The book told the story of a Colonel who had fought in the Colombian civil war and was now retired, living deep in the Colombian jungle. His son had been shot by soldiers for conspiracy and their town was under martial law. The town's only contact with the outside world was the weekly boat which brought the post and newspapers. The colonel and his wife were looking after their son's fighting cock and spend most of the book deciding whether to sell it or keep it and hope it kept winning. Every Friday the Colonel would go down to the harbour and meet the boat bringing the post to see if his pension had arrived, living on credit and getting medication from the doctor on the promise the war pension would come through the following week. We were then asked to answer questions on social injustice and how this literature was still relevant today. I had only just turned 17! What did I know about social injustice? I was still living at home! I am now in my early 30s and this is starting to make sense. I have a property on the market and I have credit card bills. I need to sell the house to pay the bills. Should I hold on to my rooster and get a better price? I must be growing up, in my teens I would have made a cheap hold on to my cock gag, but this is a family show. Here’s the punch line to this cautionary tail and I’m not making this up, but the Spanish girl, Rosa, ended up marrying the French student. It still irks me.

Aussie television

I remember TV as a child being variety shows and British made sitcoms. What has happened to writers these days? I was raised on a steady diet of Are You Being Served? The Two Ronnies, Morecombe and Wise, Only Fools and Horses  and American imports such as the Rockford Files, the Muppet Show, Magnum P.I, Dallas, Dynasty and the like. I remember there being a fuss when Dallas and Dynasty came over the Atlantic . Why were the schedules being cluttered up with no-brainer vacuous fare about oil barons and their families? The BBC's response was Eastenders. A soap opera set in working class East London around Albert Square , a traditional market and the lives of the store holders. It sounds quite quaint explaining it like this, but it was and continues to be extremely gritty with murders, adultery, drugs, alcoholism, suicide and rape all featuring in storylines. It recently hit the headlines by having a full 30 minute episode with an entirely black cast. A landmark for the BBC. However, rather than be viewed as a positive, the episode dealt with race riots and bigotry experienced by the characters since their immigration from the West Indies . Not a cheery show, but it pulls in record audiences, only occasionally topped by ITV's Coronation Street , another soap opera based in the northern city of Manchester . I was never an avid watcher of either, but Coronation Street, or Corrie, as it is affectionately known by its legion of fans, has a lot more light hearted moments, while still dealing with the grittier subjects, like trans-gender marriage, armed assault, adoption, abortion and incest. While I appreciate their place in the TV listings and I admit both shows have talented writers and actors I am not a fan. I don’t like being drawn in and having something like that take over my life. There were many other British soaps I remember growing up: Brookside, set in Liverpool , Take the High Road, which I think was set in the Scottish highlands, but a recent addition is the young and trendy Hollyoaks, which first went to air about ten years ago. The majority of the cast were in the teens or early 20s. The show was aired at 6:30 pm on Channel 4. (We only had 4 channels growing up before the days of satellite and digital. This rose to five with the addition of the imaginatively named Channel 5 in the early 90s, but the picture quality and programme content was that bad, it had to re-brand itself several times. It is now called simply "five" and specialises in obscure football matches, American ice hockey and baseball and late night films for an adult audience). Hollyoaks was welcomed with open arms by British teenagers as most of the cast were good looking and the storylines seemed more realistic than the constant doom and gloom of Eastenders and Coronation Street . The show was set in a suburb if Bristol in England 's west country. Although the cast were almost exclusively white, they specialised in bringing in regional actors and my own cousin briefly made an appearance as the brother of a Northern Irish student, before being written out and starring as a side kick to the puppet Basil Brush in the relaunch of an old children's TV programme. Hollyoaks also screened several episodes of "Late Nate Hollyoaks" as the climax to storylines that had to be shown after the 9pm watershed. From memory these dealt with sexual assault within marriage and male rape. With Hollyoaks being the more cheery of the soap operas, it is no wonder that the British viewing public fell in love with "Aussie soapies" Neighbours and Home and Away. The cast regularly appear in the gossip magazines stumbling out of nightclubs, with the girls on the arms of football stars and on the covers of lads' magazines like FHM and Loaded.

Neighbours was always my favourite. It was set in the fictitious Melbourne suburb of Erinsborough - an anagram of the show's title. The cul de sac where the cast lived was near a school and a hotel complex owned by one of the residents of Ramsey Street . The main characters all worked locally at the pub, the hotel or the school. It was almost always sunny and there were many light-hearted moments, I remember one in particular now legendary episode where Bounder the dog dreamt he met another dog and they got married. Surely this is the only episode more ridiculous the Bobby Ewing coming back from the dead in the "it was all just a dream" twist. Neighbours is now so big, they run daily tours round the set and you can have a drink with the cast afterwards. They have even started doing Neighbours nights in Sydney once a month. These are hugely popular with British backpackers and attract large crowds to see character singing and performing stand up and question and answer sessions. Another phenomenon linked with the show is the huge number of cast members who become pop stars and recording artists in their own right. Former stars who have gone on to achieve chart success include Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan, Deltra Goodrem and most recently Natalie Bassingthswaite and to a lesser extent Stefan Dennis, Craig McLaughlin. The other Australian show enjoying huge success in Britain is Home and Away. Set in Summer Bay and filmed ten minutes from my house in Palm Beach , next to tennis star Lleyton Hewitt's house. It has a younger cast who have nearly all lived with Pippa, a maternal character who seems to take in strays. There have been a number of Pippas which demonstrates one of the great TV executive decisions. An actor leaves the show, but their character is integral to the plot, so they decide to replace the actor and not mention it, hoping no-one will notice they look completely different. Fantastic. Kylie's sister Danni Mingoue and Melissa George are two of the more famous alumini from Home and Away. Melissa has done very well, snaring a famous husband in Sacha Baron Cohen, the creator ofAli G and Borat and starring in the Wedding Crashers and Grays Anatomy among other things.

Certainly these shows show Australia in a good light and are much more positive than their British counterparts, but I think this re-enforces the metaphor that Australians are much brighter in their outlook as a relatively young nation, compared to their counterparts in gloomy run down Britain where the empire has fallen and they are overrun by Americana, unable to establish their traditional role as the centre of the sporting, cultural and business world. Australia is a terrific place to live with a healthier outdoors lifestyle, a healthy preoccupation with sport and the arts while the main British pastime appears to be over-indulgence in alcohol, eating bad food and starting fights in the street.

Terrorism returns to Northern Ireland

I went into work on Monday morning a bit cheerier than normal for a Monday. I had a great weekend and was eager to get into the office to get started on some new projects. I got to my desk and logged into my pc to check the news headlines. Then I saw it....

 

On Saturday night at a small army base in Massarene, just outside the town of Antrim in Northern Ireland , an IRA active service unit had shot six soldiers killing two of them and injuring a number of civilians. I was sure this sort of thing was behind my country and since the signing of the Good Friday agreement things had moved on. Certainly this was the first killing in over ten years. A group called the Real IRA claimed responsibility. They had arrived in a car sent by Dominos pizza delivery men and carried out a drive-by shooting on the base as the soldiers went to collect their last meal in Northern Ireland before leaving for Afghanistan the next morning. Pathetically, the Real IRA, a splinter group of the Provisional IRA who are still on ceasefire, said that the pizza delivery men injured in the attack, one local and another a Polish man living in Antrim, were seen as collateral damage and legitimate targets as they were in collusion with the occupying British forces.....for selling them pizza.

Thankfully, the entire country rose up in protest at the attack whereas before, there would have been some support from the republican community who support the armed struggle for a united Ireland . Things have moved on.

Then on Monday a policeman was shot by the Continuity IRA, another splinter group opposed to their political wing, Sinn Fein being involved in a government with the Democratic Unionist Party, there political opponents for many years. The First and Deputy First Ministers Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness are due to leave for America any day now on a ten day tour culminating in a St Patrick's Day meeting with President Obama.

In Belfast , Northern Ireland 's power-sharing leaders stood shoulder to shoulder outside the Stormont Assembly. The image of the two former foes standing side by side was deliberately designed to send a strong message to the dissident republicans opposed to the peace process. This was an echo of the Good Friday Agreement era when the entire population had to vote Yes or No in a democratic ballot for the peace process and all the political baggage that entailed. The inclusion of a clause releasing political prisoners, including many murderers and bomb makers enraged families of victims and polarized opinion for some time. U2 and another Irish band Ash played a free peace concert for all 17 year old students to sway their vote. The climax of this was Bono calling the political leaders from both sides, John Hume and David Trimble on stage for an historic handshake - an image that will remain with me for the rest of my life.

The Deputy First Minister and Sinn Fein leader Martin McGuinness is a former high-ranking member of the Provisional IRA. He gave a press conference overnight in Belfast , saying, "These people they are traitors to the island of Ireland . They have betrayed the political desires, hopes and aspirations of all of the people who live on this island."

Three dead in three days raises questions about the level of security in Northern Ireland, but Sir Hugh Orde, the province's chief constable, rules out bringing troops on the streets. I grew up with solders on the streets, roadblocks and army checkpoints in the city centre. It's not something I would wish on this, or future generations.

The rallies have been organised at short notice in Belfast , Londonderry and other cities. The call for ordinary people to come out and show their disgust about the upsurge in violence came after PC Carroll was shot in the back of the head on Monday night - two days after the murders of two British soldiers outside their military barracks at Massereene, Antrim. I have been to several peace rallies at Belfast 's city hall. None of them seemed to achieve much, but this feels like it may have the desired result.

Martin McGuinness, Northern Ireland 's deputy first minister, yesterday nudged mainstream republicans further towards full co-operation with the security forces. McGuinness said that if he had had any firsthand knowledge of who was behind the murder of PC Carroll he would personally pass it on to the police. The officer was just two years from retirement after serving 24 years as a policeman in Northern Ireland , much of it through the worst of the violence when the IRA's campaign was at its height. He is the first member of the Police Service of Northern Ireland to be murdered since it was formed eight years ago. His widow Kate, a teacher at a local college, said: "A good husband has been taken away from me, and my life has been destroyed. These people have just taken my life as well." It has been written that many terrorists are brain-washed and de-sensitized to think of their targets as objects rather than human beings, but this sort of response really strikes a chord with me, after years of being desensitized to news reports of bombings and murders.