Lessons I've Learned the Hard Way

An insurance company is not your friend

2010-08-28T09:00:00.000+01:00

I've learned the hard way that an insurance company isn't there to give you money if you get into trouble, or to help you out of a bad situation. No, it's there to suck up your premiums into a bottomless pit, while making you feel like you might have a little bit of protection against a rainy day. No matter how helpful and friendly your agent might be when you're buying your policy, when you make a claim chances are your insurance company will turn as hard and legalistic as a white-shoed New York lawyer, rummaging through the fine print, provisos and caveats with a magnifying glass until they find some way to get out of paying you.

Can you tell I've been burned? My worst insurance moment was in Australia, the first time I tried to make a claim under my car insurance. One morning, I was rudely awakened by a call from Australian Federal Police, wanting to know where I had been the previous night, as my car had been used in a series of ram-raids across Canberra. At first when they heard my confused answers, they must have thought that they'd gotten their girl. They became decidedly more friendly when they realised that the reason that I was a little befudded was that I was in Perth, three time zones away, and their 9 a.m. call had woken me an hour before my alarm.

As soon as I got into work, I was straight onto my insurance company. I should have known by the lengthy pause after they brought up my policy details that something was wrong. My policy had expired a week ago, despite all the reminder notices they had sent (but which I hadn't received). On further investigation, it turns out that the insurance company had been sending my reminder notices to a house up the street with the same number as my apartment. Terribly sorry, what an oversight on our part - but you still should have renewed your policy and should have notified us that we had the wrong address. I'm not sure how I was meant to know that my mail was being sent to a complete stranger. Luckily I didn't end up having to fight this one out - the police found my car abandoned on the site of the Old Canberra Hospital (after the brainiacs who had stolen it thought that they might find something potent in the abandoned pharmacy, but got trapped on the way out between the fence and a pack of ravenous guard rottweillers.) The car was damaged but still drivable (although not by me - I couldn't feel safe in it after that). I took the money I made selling it and bought a similar second-hand car, and this time I insured it with a different company, and went through the addresses and all the other details on the policy with a fine-tooth comb before I signed anything.

My second bad insurance experience wasn't really the fault of the insurer, it was a case of terrible timing. Not being someone who wastes a lot of time, my first baby was born 1 year and 4 days after I arrived in Dublin. I set up health insurance shortly after I arrived but it still took about a week to process. There were standard waiting periods, including a 12 month waiting period for maternity coverage. My little girl ended up being born the day before the 12 month waiting period expired - 11 hours and 2 minutes before we would have been covered. Now to be fair to my insurer, they didn't actually reject my claim - I knew that it would be cutting it fine, and decided to go with the free public health care for my pregnancy rather than have the argument. Still, I do wonder why a policy wouldn't cover you if you get pregnant at any time after you sign up to the policy (as I did). How could it possibly be necessary to give you a 3 month period at the start of your policy when you're not allowed to get pregnant? And what happens if you wait until after this 3 month period has elapsed to conceive, but still don't make 12 months because your baby is born early?

Insurance is a necessary evil, it's not until you don't have it that you realise how much you needed it. Still, I'm now much more careful than I used to be about checking the terms of the policy. There will always be ways for the insurance companies to get out of paying, little loopholes stitched into the fabric of the policy so delicately that you'd never notice them (until they're pointed out to you in a two page letter explaining why the insurance company is, unfortunately, unable to make any payment under your policy in respect of the relevant incident at this time). Still, if you're careful you can close off on a few of the bigger ones, and make the job of the people sitting in the Claims Processing Unit whose job it is not to give you any money just that little bit harder.

A great first chapter doesn't make you a writer

2010-08-21T21:14:00.000+01:00

The recent, untimely death of my laptop affected me in many ways. I mourned the pictures of my smiling awkwardly in front of St Basils and the Kremlin, which I was too busy to print. I pitied the residents of Aurora, my Sim City, who will now never know the joy of living in a fully functioning metropolis. I glared longingly at my new external hard-drive, pristine in its plastic carton, hoping madly that I had backed up but forgotten that I'd done it. When I realised that my manuscripts were gone, beyond hope of recovery, I breathed a sigh of relief. Wiped away with all my university essays were the three first chapters of The Greatest Book Ever, that I was now saved from ever having to complete.

The first time I sat down to write The Greatest Book Ever, it was going to be a historical novel, telling a fictional story about a real-life serial killer, a nineteenth century psychopath who married widowers with children and proceeded to kill them off, one at a time, with hydrochloric acid. It showed promise: unique characters and real-life situations, chilling details available through transcripts of the trial. The first chapter was a page turner. One chapter in I moved to Japan and, citing the lack of easy access to research materials, I shelved it in favour of something that I could work on without access to the archives.

The second time The Greatest Book Ever was born, it was a children's book. It would be a Princess Bride for the 21st century, full of gypsies and magic, revenge and honour, good deeds rewarded and evildoers punished. A little bit of something for everyone aged between 8 and 14. I reworked the first chapter again and again until I was happy with every word, and ready to write more. I was reluctantly forced to put the pen down for a business trip to Malaysia. The long-distance relationship didn't work. By the time I got back, the third incarnation of The Greatest Book Ever was beckoning, blinding me to all else. This semi-autobiographical tale of an Australian lawyer living the high life in Tokyo, would have been a hard-hitting, cynical, tell-all acount of the daily scandals and sins that make up expat life The first chapter, at least, was a knock-out. Perhaps the second through thirty fourth chapters would have been interesting, compelling drama, had they ever been written. These ghost chapters lingered too long, and when I left Japan, and my inspiration, behind they weren't strong enough to follow.

Now these three incarnations of The Greatest Book Ever Written have disappeared behind an impenetrable blue screen, never to be seen again. Of all of them, the one I'd like to ressurect would be my children's book - it would be great if I could have this ready to read to my children when they're old enough to appreciate it. I'm hoping that this will give me the motivation I need to get past the first chapter, and that once I'm over that hurdle the rest of the book will just flow. Lonely first chapters that never get any further than my own hard drive aren't good for anything other than typing practice - if I'm going to make my dream of becoming the next JK Rowling come true, I need to get past my roadblock at Chapter 2 and get writing.

Newborn babies are perfectly happy with hand-me-downs

2010-08-14T22:22:00.000+01:00

Time is relative, and the slowest nine months of my life was when I was pregnant with my little girl. I was so excited, I counted down each day, willing time to move faster until I could hold my little baby in my arms. When I cheated and asked the ultrasound operator what colour baby clothes I should be buying, I was absolutely thrilled when she said "Pink". After that, I couldn't help myself - I became a layette addict. I couldn't walk past Adams, Ladybird or Dunnes without popping in "just to have a look", and walking out again laden with bags of impractical pink Winnie-the-Pooh-themed fripperies.

There was no stopping me. In the three months before my little girl was born, I bought adorable little matching vests and sleep-suits, frilly organza dresses with matching striped stockings, gorgeous little snow-suits with teddy-bear ears on the hood, and dozens and dozens of little woolly booties. When I added up the receipts, it turned out that I'd spent more on baby clothes than I had for clothes for myself for a whole year (I'm a very reluctant shopper, for myself at least.) I was insatiable.

I ended up using about 10% of what I'd bought. Fancy and scratchy dresses quickly ended up shoved at the back of the cupboard, gathering dust. The dozens of gorgeous sleep-suits that I'd bought which buttoned up the back were quickly discarded, as they were just too difficult to take on and off, and no matter how cute she looked in them it wasn't worth the distress it caused her. Baby booties turned out to be completely impractical. When the occasion called for her to be dressed up nicely, then we favoured one of the many dresses that we'd received as gifts (so as not to be rude). For about 4 months, she lived pretty much exclusively in vests and sleep-suits, and by the time she was big enough for other clothes to be appropriate she had grown too big for most of the pretty things that I'd spent so much on

I was much more restrained when my little boy came along. Not being the patient type I again found out which clothes I should buy, but this time I left off buying them until the last minute, and I limited myself to vests and baby grows (well, maybe just one or two darling little sailor suits and baby sneakers, just because...). My sister-in-law handed over several bags full of clothes from her little boy, who had just grown out of them. I spent nowhere near what I had done on clothes for my little girl. My little boy hasn't ever complained - if anything he's been more comfortable from having had his clothes already worn in and stretched for him.

Gorgeous as baby clothes are, it's just not economical to spend that amount on money on clothes that, to be honest, are only going to fit for a couple of weeks at most and which will be covered in spit-up and drool (and worse!). For my new little bundle (who's joining us in a couple of months), I'll definitely try and steer clear of the baby shops as much as I possibly can, or at least, to leave my wallet behind if I go.

Turning Japanese is nowhere near as easy as the Vapors made out

2010-08-07T21:22:00.000+01:00

For the three and a half years that I lived in Tokyo, I stuck out like Anna Nicole Smith in a nunnery. There were some times it was great - being a head taller than everyone else during the sardine hours on the Yamanote line meant that I could breathe, unlike the majority of the heaving crowd. Other times, not so much.

Even though I'd studied Japanese at University, I never put in the effort to become fluent enough to carry on a real, satisfying conversation. I could give factual information, ask whether somebody liked something, or if they had ever been somewhere. But I couldn't ask the type of questions, or give the type of answers, that go along with developing a close friendship. I tended to hang around with other expats, polishing the bar at Mogambos, or trying to convince myself that I was a karaoke super-star. (I still maintain that my duet vocals on "Barbie Girl" were absolutely classic.). When I did make some close Japanese friends, they all spoke quite good English, which they were happy to practice.

I regret not putting more effort into practising my Japanese while it was all around me. Now that I'm in Dublin and the only Japense around is on the menu at Yo! Sushi, the thousands of characters that I painstakingly drilled into my head are slowly disappearing. The space is now filled with trivia for the Irish Qualified Lawyers Transfer Test (QLTT), like the changes introduced by the Lisbon Treaty, the new requirements for execution of a deed, and case names in their hundreds.

Even had I fought my way through the language barrier, there was another issue which kept me firmly on the outside of things: the way I looked. I could never help but be hurt by the regular whispers behind raised hands as I passed by ('Mitte, gaigin ga futtota!' - 'Look at that fat foreigner!'). Admittedly I wasn't going to be sashaying down a catwalk or sliding into any size zero jeans, but in another country I would have been seen as a curvaceous (or even bootylicious) young lady. In Japan, I was the Michelin man, after a big Christmas dinner. I was a sumo wrestler. I was Godzilla, with a blonde wig.

Even with a strict diet and daily gym sessions, I still loomed large compared to the Japanese people wherever I went. The "leave your clothes at the door" rules at the hot springs didn't do much to help my self esteem, which was the only part of me as slim as Japanese standards required. I was never so happy as when, about a week or so after I moved back to Sydney, I had my femininity at least somewhat reaffirmed by being whistled at by a craggy, beer-bellied builder in a blue wife-beater and low-hung, cleavage-revealing trousers as I walked by a building site on George Street. It wasn't much, but it was a feast for someone who had been on very short rations for attention (or at least, positive attention) for a long long time.

I enjoyed my time in Japan, even as isolated and strange as I sometimes felt. It was exciting, interesting and exotic. But it's not somewhere I could have stayed forever - there's only so long I could be happy being the odd one out, never having any hope of turning Japanese.

Scarves are only for stewardesses

2010-07-31T13:39:00.000+01:00

It was much more down to good luck than good management that I somehow made it through my first few years as a lawyer. It's only in retrospect that I realise how completely out-of-place I looked, and what an awful first impression I must have made. With a starting salary on par with the gophers in the mail room, and no idea how to make this stretch to the sorts of designer suits walking down the catwalks of LA Law or Ally McBeal, I had to be a little creative. The results were not good.
I had one suit "for best", a black dress with matching jacket that I wore to job interviews and for client meetings. My only two other suits were bargain basement, one dark grey and one navy blue, slightly shiny and covered in little pills after the first couple of dry-cleans. My one pair of work shoes were sensible pumps, polished to a high shine but with heels that wore down on one side within days of being replaced. I had exactly four sensible, button up cotton shirts in white, and (for the days when I was feeling adventurous), a light blue shirt with red pin stripes.

My spartan wardrobe didn't leave room for much variety, and so I tried to accessorise in the mistaken belief that this would fool people into thinking I owned more than three suits. Although I had an overcrowded jewellery box full of artistic expression, after discarding the rafia-work, the sea-shells and the gaudy costume jeweller there were only 2 necklaces in my jewellery collection that were suitable for work: one string of pearls (a gift from my grandfather) and one gold necklack with a little round pendant. I alternated these on a daily basis, and steered clear of other jewellery. (My favourite mood-ring wouldn't have been appropriate for work (as it would have shown me as "scared stiff - what on earth are you doing there?" most of the time). The only way I could think of to brighten up my look (and to make it look a little different from one day to the next) was to wear silk scarves that I'd borrowed from my mother, tied as a neckerchief using different interestingly shaped knots.

I was going through my photos the other day, and found one of my parents and I at my admission ceremony, about six months after I started work. I was in my black "for best" dress, wearing a string of pearls, with a fake Louis Voutton scarf tied in a big knot on the side. I looked like I worked for Qantas - all I needed to complete the look was a little box hat set at a jaunty angle and a tray of drinks. Definitely not the look that I was going for.

Luckily as the number of suits I was able to afford increased I became less inclined to wear a neckerchief, and now I don't own one. My wardrobe never did live up to the standards of Ally McBeal (and my skirts have always been a lot longer). Still, at least when I go into client meetings now I no longer look like I should be serving the tea.

Don't rent a bicycle with broken pedals, it won't take you very far

2010-07-24T15:25:00.000+01:00

It's always a good idea to double-check your equipment before leaving for a trip, especially if it's rented. I learned this the hard way when, cycling with my travel buddy Louise along the highway between Auroville and Pondicherry in Tamil Nadu, India, I watched with open-mouth horror as the pedal flew off Louise's bike, leaving her wobbling uncontrollably on the edge of a delapidated highway, directly into the path of the oncoming semi-trailers.

For some reason, while I was in India rather than going with the flow as I normally would, I felt the need to recreate as many of the "must do" experiences for backpackers on a tight budget that had been showcased in the Lonely Planet South India episode. After much convincing, I managed to convince my travel buddy to come along with me and, just like Justine Shapiro, we found ourselves taking a day-trip by bicycle from Pondicherry to visit Auroville. Never mind that I am about as spiritual and karmically aligned as a lop-sided bullfrog, and hardly likely to be interested in anything "a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities" had to offer. Never mind that my Australian sensibilities were made slightly uneasy at the neo-colonialism reflected in the decision to plonk a foreign community there, like a little island of wealth and privilege for the local people to look at from outside. Never mind that I could barely ride a bike. If Justine could do it, and enjoy it, then so would I.

The wonders of television couldn't have captured the reality of what we would encounter on the ride. I never saw Justine have to dodge steaming patties dropped behind oxen-drawn wagons, or getsucked towards the road by the wind after a semi-trailer hurtled by at 100 miles per hour, oblivious to all around it. Justine didn't sweat, didn't have black flies plastered across her back like scales, and wasn't practically passing out from the mid-summer heat. Still, we made it. Unfortunately, because I'd had no real reason for going to Auroville other than to say I'd been there, I quickly discovered that it wasn't my cup of chai. After looking around the inside of the Matri Mandir for a few minutes we found ourselves at a loss for things to do, and so started back to Pondicherry, under the full strength of the midday sun.

Within a few minutes of reaching the main road, as Louise was speeding up to overtake a little truck with its hazard lights on, which moving so slowly that it might as well have been foot-powered like Fred Flintstone's car, she brought her right foot down on the pedal and enountered absolutely nothing. She overbalanced, careening out onto the road in front of the oncoming traffic. If there hadn't been an unusually long break in between trucks, Louise would have found herself a backpacker pancake, and I would have had to explain to her parents how it was all my idea. She somehow managed to swerve myself back onto the verge, and toppled over onto the dust, her head barely missing one of the omnipresent piles of manure. Looking back down the road, I saw a lonely bicycle pedal, its reflective panel dazzling, the cause of the problem. The screw holding the pedal in place had sheared off, leaving her bike practically useless, still around three miles about from our destination.

Our rest of the trip back was slow and halting, as my friend coasted the bike along with her feet on the ground. It topped off what had been a miserable day, full of unfulfilled expectations and wasted efforts. The day would still have been a disappointment, even with perfectly working equipment. But by renting a dangerous, poorly-maintained bike without checking it over, we could very well have turned a disappointment into a disaster.

Skip the drinking games at your office party

2010-07-17T22:27:00.000+01:00

My first, and worst, office party was an End of Financial Year party about 6 months after I started work as a graduate lawyer. I was still in the honeymoon phase, in awe of my seniors and trying desperately to impress. Looking back, my attempt to do so by challenging the partners to drinking games with margharitas, and winning, probably didn't achieve what I intended.

What it did do was put me in the sort of muddled haze, where instead of remembering that I would be seing these people at work on Monday, I thought that I'd made a lot of brand new friends and behaved accordingly.

Drinks were on the house, with no limits, and I tried pretty much everything on the menu. Skipping dinner (because eating is cheating), I sat down with the head of the Administrative Law Group as we worked our way down a line of B-52s. When the party moved from the restaurant into the nightclub next door, I bopped enthusiastically away, clumsily throwing in a few of my newly acquired salsa steps and bumping around the dancefloor like a dodgem car.

I eventually wound up at the edge of the dancefloor, next to the steps leading down from the bar, slightly out of breath. It seemed like a completely sensible thing to do to sit down on the steps for a rest, and I reached down to steady myself.

I didn't hear my wrist snap over the pounding music, and didn't register the pain through the alcohol-fueled numbness. It was only later, when I realised that I couldn't turn the tap in the bathroom, that I realised that something might be a little off. My wrist was hotter than it should be, and I could barely move it. I stumbled out of the bathroom and slurred something to Jeremy, the "buddy" who had been assigned to me, about hurting my arm. He, very helpfully, responded by getting me another round.

A few tequilla slammers later, a half-hour wait in the taxi line, and I was home, passed out in bed. The numbness continued until the next morning when, along with the hangover, came an agonising pain as my body realised what had happened.

I turned up for work on Monday with my cheeks bright red and a purple cast on my arm. Luckily I wasn't the only person with party-related injuries ,so the spotlight was shared. Still, I was never able to live it down, and when I moved on six years later my boss mentioned that party in his farewell speech.

I'm much more careful at office parties now, even a little dull. But it's better to be boring than to be broken! And your reputation can take much longer to recover than any broken bones.

Leave climbing mountains to the brave (and the masochists)

2010-07-10T22:52:00.000+01:00

There have only been two times in my life when I seriously doubted my sanity, and both of those took place at over 3,700 metres above sea level. After barely making it back the second time, I put in a standing order to call the men in the white coats if I ever show even the slightest inclination towards seeing what's on the other side of a mountain again.

The Inca Trail

I was in Peru the first time I thought I might be in need of mental help for voluntarily agreeing to suffer as I was, on a 4 day trek along the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. The hike started out easily enough, an easy stroll through rolling jungle, but my initial optimism was short-lived. Soon it was expodentially steeper, like uneven flights of stairs, slippery from the constant foggy haze. The weather was indecisive, the rain on and off like a teenage romance. The air became thinner with every passing hour, making it more and more difficult to breathe. I struggled along towards the rear, groaning under the ever-increasing burden of my daypack, quads and hamstrings burning. Every so often as I limped along at a snail's pace I was overtaken by a smiling but silent porter, carrying at least three overloaded packs while he practically skipped down the path, surefooted and effortless.

After I collapsed into my tent at the end of the first day, I wished that I could amputate my head, leaving my suffering body to deal with the recovery all by itself. Unfortunately there was no recovery to be had: early the next morning we set off again, and again the next morning, and the next. By the time we reached Machu Picchu at sunrise on the fourth day, I had to convince my legs to make each step, and talk my eyes into staying open. I'm glad they did because what I saw was just as stunning as the guidebooks had said.

I found myself a collapsed shell of a house, sat on a stone windowsill, and spent a couple of hours looking out over the valley at these ruins in the clouds. Perhaps if I'd caught the train or the bus up there I might have had the energy to do some more exploring, but I quite enjoyed the solitude of the little hideaway that I found, away from the chattering tour groups that swarmed like locusts after breakfast.

Mt Fuji

The memory of the pain of the Inca Trail faded fairly quickly, as a result of medicinal caiparhenas during a few days of recovery in Cuzco. So for some reason, when I moved to Japan, I was determined to climb Mt Fuji before I left. This climb is so much a part of Japanese culture that they have developed a saying "Only a fool never climbs Mt Fuji, and only a fool would climb it twice." I agree with the second part of the saying, even if the first part is a little more dubious...

I lived in Tokyo for over 3 years, but it was only just before I was about to go home that I got around to organising a trip. I had put it off until the very last weekend of the last season. It was just coming into rainy season, and an early typhoon was blowing in. I had believed the weather reports which had said that the rain would hold off, but almost as soon as we had left the comfortable lodges at the 5th station and started for the summit, the rain started and wouldn't let up. Looking up I could see mulicoloured plastic raincoats of climbers ahead of us, getting smaller into the distances, like confetti along the path. The rocks we clambered over were slick and slippery, as little streams of rainwater tricked then flowed.

We were staying overnight in one of the shelters about three quarters of the way up the mountain, to allow us to get to the top in time to see the sunrise. The mountain was very busy, and the shelter was full to the brim of excited and very wet people of all ages, all smelling slightly of wet dog. We all slept in a single caverou room, top to tail on the hard tatami mats, for the too-brief respite. When a gentle sock in the face meant that it was time to get up, we reluctantly headed outside only to find ouselves in a traffic jam. The whole of Tokyo appeared to have decided to take this last opportunity of the season and venture up Mt Fuji, and from that point on the climb became a slow shuffe in the dark.

I had borrowed an unreliable miner's-helmet style torch, which needed to be at a certain angle on my head for the batteries to connect and to come on. This wasn't generally a problem, because there were so many other people on the path that I could use their light. But in one particularly rocky stretch, there was a moment when I moved up away from the people behind me and couldn't see around me. I shuffled forward, holding onto the rocks with one hand and nodding my head side to side and up and down like a Hawaiian doll. I was shaking it so vigorously that I lost my footing, and fell down on my knees onto a pointed obsidian rock, sharp as a knife.

When the next climbers came along, and their head lamps revealed that I wasn't actually on the edge of a cliff as I had imagined, I jumped up and walked along pretending nothing had happened, red-faced with embarrassment. The initial sensation I remember wasn't pain, it was a slow warmth trickling down my calf. I couldn't see how bad the damage to my knee was until I eventually made it to the plateau on top of the mountain, an hour or so later. The rain briefly stopped, and shapes and colours became clearer with the morning light. As the glorious sunrise hid unseen behind thick grey clouds, my black trousers dried to a lighter blue, except for one leg below knee level. As the light improved I could see that it was dark crimson rather than black. The squelching inside my left hiking boot wasn't from the rain. My calves were covered in coagulated blood and mud, from top to bottom. My knee had been sliced across with scalpel-like precision, my knee-cap peeping through. That's when my knee started to hurt.

There is only one path down Mt Fuji (unless you have sufficient numbers of bones broken to be helicoptered off strapped to a stretcher), which has a fairly easy gradient and is a scree slope made up of pebbles. The pebbles move out from underneath your foot with each step, like walking on a sandy beach. With every movement down, my open kneecap tore a little more. The pain was agonising, each step worse than the one before, and knowing how many thousands more steps there were to go. Some people run down the mountain, sprinting back for a breakfast bowl of ramen in the warmth of Station 5 in half an hour. I limped down, each step a battle of wills between an exhausted body that wanted the comfortable rest that was only available at the end of the trail, and by a wounded, complaining knee. Those were the longest four hours of my life, as I fought with my body and my mind to make it. All this, just to spend some time shivering on a hut 3,700 metres in the air, in the fog, unable to see more than a few metres into the distance.

I managed to escape the Inca Trail with nothing more than strained muscles and bruises. After Mt Fuji, my knee bears a deep v-shaped scar, and the mere thought of clambering to the top of a hill "just because it's there" makes me shudder. Just imagine how I'd feel if I'd climbed a real mountain, like Everest or Kilimanjaro, rather than Mt Fuji, which has rest stops and vending machines and a comforting swarm of climbers of all ages, from children to pensioners. I wouldn't even be able to make it to base camp on a real mountain. And I wouldn't want to. Mountain climbing is definitely best left to those (slightly masochistic) few adventurers who yearn for it, and train for it, and live for it. From now on I'll be happy looking at the pictures that they bring back.

Whitewater rafting is just as dangerous as it looks

2010-07-03T21:10:00.001+01:00

I once spent a week in Bali as a stopover on the way to India. I stayed at one of the "party hotels" in Kuta, just next door to the nightclub that was bombed a couple of years later. The place was full of 18-30s doing what they do, drinking and flirting all night and spending their days (or the afternoons anyway, after the hangovers were bearable) testing their bravery with adventure sports like scuba diving, para-sailing, and surfing.
I thought I would give whitewater rafting a go, and so did pretty much every other tourist on the Island. The river was choc-a-bloc full of yellow inflatable rafts full of foreigners, bouncing along with their little paddles, trying to navigate down a river that was dangerously low. At each bend there was a log jam, and it was like a dodgem car ride with a vertical drop. Great fun, until the guy in front of me got a little too enthusiastic with his paddling, at exactly the same time as our raft hit the one in front of us in the queue. The paddle flew back and his fist hit me in the mouth, smashing my lip and pushing my front tooth right back into my mouth, where it hung like a stalactite.

As soon as we got back onto dry land, the tour guide drove me to the local dentist. I was reassured by the professional and clean little office, but this quickly turned to horror when I found out what they were going to do to me. One man came and held me down, while the dentist (a wiry lady, no more than 25 years old, who looked like she could be beaten up by a chihuahua) wrestled the tooth back into place. They didn't give me any anaesthetic, and when I heard a loud crack coming from my mouth I was sure that I was going to be a jack-o-lantern. But no, when I finally had the courage to look in the mirror there was my tooth back in place, a little tender but otherwise fine. (The time I went to the dentist back home, he told me that if that had happened in Australia I would have been stuck wearing braces for months to try and get it into place, and would have needed root canal work.)

Encounters with paddles and sadistic (yet quick and effective) dentists aside, I had an absolutely amazing time in Bali - the people are friendly, the food is exotic and tasty, it's cheap, and there's lots of things to keep you entertained. Lonely Planet has plenty of information if you're interested.

But don't forget to take along a mouthguard if you're going rafting! And make sure you lock your bag before you get on the plane, you don't want to end up in Hotel Kerobokan if traffickers hide their goods in your bag...

Don't go scuba diving with a headcold

2010-06-26T14:30:00.000+01:00

It's one of the first rules that the instructor told me in the PADI diving course - you can't dive if you have a cold, because you won't be able to equalise the pressure and your ear drums will explode.

But for some reason when I came down with the sniffles the day before my first dive in Perth, Western Australia, I figured that I'd be OK as long as I dosed up on Sinutab to clear my head. I wasn't OK. Before I'd descended even a couple of metres I was in trouble. I couldn't equalise properly, and I hung about mid-level for so long that I was sure my buddy had gone to sleep. Eventually I got the smallest sensation that might have been a pop in my ears, and decided to keep on going towards the sea bed. I didn't even get close. There was a sharp pain in my right ear, then throbbing as I made my way back up to the surface. Back on the boat, my ear was ringing so loudly I could barely make out what people were saying. I was almost in tears, thinking I'd done irreparable damage and that I might be deafened.

Luckily, I didn't quite manage to burst my eardrum (although according to the doctor I came quite close), although I do get ringing in my ears a lot more than I used to. I've not been scuba diving again since then, for fear of doing permanent damage. It's such a waste of my PADI license - I've only dived twice. The first time was in British Columbia, Canada when I was doing my course, the water as freezing, the visibility was so bad I couldn't see my buddy, and the only thing I was was an old tyre and a starfish. The second time was in the beautiful, warm, clear waters off Hillarys in Perth, where I saw some fantastic turtles and fish but then nearly made my head explode. Realistically I don't think it's likely that I'll try again, at least not until I can forget about the pain of it all (and that might be some time -my Perth dive was eight years ago now).

Anyway, the moral of this story is that there are certain rules that you really do have to follow (like the safety rules in scuba diving). If you try and cheat, you'll just end up hurting yourself.

You can never fart with confidence in Asia

2010-06-19T23:04:00.000+01:00

If you've travelled through any countries where the food is unfamiliar and the water is somewhat suspect, there will come a time when you forget to use bottled water to brush your teeth, or eat a crispy garden salad that's been washed in the sink, or sip a margharita with home-made crushed ice. And when that time comes, chances are that you'll learn the hard way: you can never fart with confidence in Asia. Those that ignore this rule often regret it, and have a hasty end to their day as they search madly for an emergency laundrette.
I would never have guessed that toilets - how to find them, their cleanliness, the availability or lack of toilet paper, whether you can wash your hands afterwards, and that horrible thing that must have happened in the stall just before you arrived - could become such a major issue when I was travelling. Until my first session with food-poisoning, I thought that a packet of Imodium and a travel-pack of tissues would be enough to get me through any bathroom-related situation. But no, these didn't help me with disgusting squat toilets surrounded in footprints of filth, stinking pit toilets next to baskets of used paper, toilets on trains that are just a hole in the floor of a carriage, or squatting next to the bus when there are no toilets. The explosive effects of an encounter with a particularly virulent case of gastroenteritis did absolutely nothing to improve any of these experiences.

You can always expect slightly cleaner toilets in McDonalds or other fast food restaurants, or if you tidy yourself up a bit and saunter through the lobby of a posh restaurant looking like you belong there, so you're generally OK in the cities. The real trial begins when you head out into the country, and you realise that it could be days or weeks before you reach the oasis that is clean porcelain.

I was hoping that after a few different trips - Bali, Malaysia, India, China, that my stomach would adjust and I could just enjoy the sights and sounds of Asia without having to focus on the pains and sounds of my poor ill-educated belly. Unfortunately no - if anything it got worse with each trip, as if the bugs from one journey would meet up with the bacteria from the last inside my intestines and start partying so loud that it disturbs the neighbours (literally). It's been a while since I've travelled through Asia now, not since I moved back to Australia from Japan in 2006. Hopefully during that time the bacteria in my system have matured a bit, so that next time there's a new bug on the block they'll invite it in for a nice hot cup of tea rather than convening a rave in my lower intestine. Somehow though, I doubt it. I'll just have to remember to pack the Imodium, to always carry around loads of packs of tissues, and to wear brown trousers just in case.

(Photo by Leshuimat.)

Ho Chi Minh City traffic waits for no man

2010-06-12T20:09:00.000+01:00

By the time I visited Ho Chi Minh City, I thought that I had seen it all. My passport was as colourful as a children's book, my backpack was nicely scuffed, I could repack a bag in minutes, and instead of buying a book in the airport I carried a dog-eared novel that I'd picked up in an internet cafe book swap. I wasn't a tourist, I was a "traveller".

But even the most hardened traveller still has things to learn. I realised that I knew pretty much nothing about the way things worked in Vietnam when I found myself stuck on a traffic island, fifty metres from the fleabag hotel I had found ($5 per night - apparently I was robbed), trapped by an endless river of scooters. Traffic didn't slow at all, didn't seem to stop for lights (although there might have been a slight pause), and was relentless.

I was waiting there for about 20 minutes, wilting in the heat, before a gnarled looking man, with sagging skin and knotted hands walked out of a tailor shop on the other wide of the street. He didn't wait, just kept walking at the same slow pace. Anywhere else and it would have been suicide, he would have been flattened. But somehow, the traffic opened up around him, as he walked steadily across the road, intent on his goal. I watched wincing with anticipation, teeth gritted as I waited for the screech and the scream. It never came, the old man moved like a glacier across the street, and went about his business completely unphased by the ebbing whirlwind of speeding metal that had me stranded. Eventually, I plucked up my courage, crossed myself (faith always sees to reappear in a life-and-death situation) and stepped into the traffic.

I made it across, one slow step at a time, and had to hold back the urge to applaud when I reached the footpath, celebrating my safe landing. It's the only way to do it - if you run, or vary your speed, the traffic won't be able to judge where you're going to be and is much more likely to hit you. (This only worked on fairly small streets, by the way - it would take a much braver, or more stupid, person than I am to venture on foot onto a Vietnamese highway...)

The time I spent on the traffic island, and the hunched and weathered little man who inadvertently taught me how to cross the road was more memorable to me than fishing on Halong Bay,or early-morning tai chi in Hanoi, or the other moments during my trip that are fading into sepia. Perhaps it was the adrenaline rush of surviving, or the joy of learning something important about a place that wasn't in the guide books Whatever it was, it's a moment that will be with me forever, and that will always make me smile.

Drink the snake wine and eat the sushi

2010-06-05T22:26:00.000+01:00

You only live once, and there's nothing worse than walking away from a situation and wondering "what if". There are several times during my travels when I had an opportunity to try something new and unique local delicacy, but held back because it was too different and scary. I'm not now ever likely to go travelling to the same places again, and so the opportunity is lost for me forever.
A few things that I wish I'd tried when I had the chance:

Snake wine in China. There was a big bottle of home-made snake wine behind the bar in Yangshuo, with the rotting corpse of a little carpet snake falling apart inside. I'm sure it would have tasted just as bad as it looked, but at least I would have known.
Guinea pigs in Peru. Not perhaps the most appetising of meats, but the locals seemed to like it. I was a vegetarian while I backpacked around South America, so I had a good excuse to get something a little less challenging, but I now wish I had tried at least a tiny taste.
Live octopus in Japan. I just couldn't bring myself to do it, it was still moving. It would have impressed my colleagues if I'd managed to get it down though...
Haggis in Scotland. Again I had the excuse of vegetarianism, but it smelt good, and probably is just as nice as a white pudding...
Whitchety grubs in Australia Apparently they taste just like chicken, if you can get past the concept of eating a bug.
Spray-on cheese in America. I couldn't quite get my head around the idea of cheese in an aerosol, but my American friends definitely seemed to enjoy it.

Perhaps all of these things would have all been absolutely awful, but it bugs me that I'll never know.

Skiing lessons are worth waiting for

2010-05-29T13:57:00.000+01:00

The first time that I went skiing was at Whistler, in Canada. On a good day, it's a little piece of alpine heaven - majestic mountains with deep powdery snow, and sky that is as clear and blue as the seas in the Carribean. I didn't go on a good day.

Conditions were downright awful - the snow set in and visibility was badly restricted. I was cold, and miserable, and nervous. It had been a last minute decision for me to go, and I wasn't properly prepared. My hastily borrowed gear was too small for me and restricted my movement, my goggles were cracked, and my woollen gloves itched like poison ivy.

I hadn't had time to arrange for lessons before I went. Despite the weather conditions classes when we arrived were all full, and I didn't want to wait until the next one two hours later. My friend Monica had agreed to show me the basics, and we had agreed to meet at beginner's slope. I had heard people talking about "green runs", and assumed that they were what she meant. So, instead of going down to the nice, flat, safe part of the mountain, I caught the lift right up to the top. I stood there strapped into my skis waiting for Monica, being buffetted by the wind as the blizzard slowly got worse. I could have given up and climbed back into the lift for a safe ride back down the mountain, but everyone else up there made it look so easy that I thought I could manage to get down to the bottom of the mountain, even if it was just snow-ploughing.

I was so wrong. Two hours later I was still taking baby steps down the mountain, and was only about a quarter of the way down a run that most people do in about 5 minutes. I would get up (taking my feet out of the skis, as I hadn't mastered getting up with them on), slowly point myself down the mountain, get up a tiny little bit of speed and then fall over again, losing my skis and poles in the process. I would then have to hike over the mountain looking for any missing apparatus before starting the whole process again.

As it started to get darker, I was rescued by the mountain patrol, who took me back to the village on their little red snow machine. My muscles were aching, and I was very embarrassed, but I was lucky not to do some real damage. I spent the rest of the day recovering at the lodge, put off skiing forever.

If I had just waited for a class and learned what I was doing, I would have enjoyed the day much more, and wouldn't have to find excuses not to go skiing now. Several years later I did work up the courage to go to the snow again, to Thredbo. That time I took lessons, and tried snowboarding intead of skiing. I found it much easier (there's less bits and pieces to lose when you fall over, and it's a lot easier getting up afterwards), and I really enjoyed myself.

Job interviews should be as easy as trying on a pair of shoes

2010-05-22T22:15:00.000+01:00

On paper, I should have been beating potential employers off with a stick when I graduated. I spoke Japanese, had two degrees, got first class honours. Sure enough, most of the places that I applied to asked me in for an interview, and I turned up in my black suit with polished shoes and a hopeful smile. But the rejection letters kept coming in. I didn't even need to open them to know what they were - a thin envelope meant one page, which meant "We're sorry but we are unable to offer you a graduate position at this time. We would like to take this opportunity to wish you every success in your future career." Big Fat No.

I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong - my handshakes were firm, my hair neatly pulled back, nails tidy, makeup subtle, teeth checked for stray lettuce. My stomach rebelled from nervousness before every interview, perhaps I smelled? I think it was probably my growing sense of desperation that was sabotaging me, the determination that this time it would be different and I'd get the job. I stopped looking at the people I was talking with as people, but saw them as the guardians of nirvana, the place I absolutely had to get into if I was ever going to be happy. I must had made the people interviewing me so uncomfortable, with fake laughs and forced smiles and a look of almost manic hope in my eyes. I wouldn't have given me a job either, who wants to work with that?

Towards the end of the process, I decided that I might as well try and think about something else to do, if the law firms wouldn't have me. I started looking into alternatives and got quite excited about courses that I could do or other paths that my life could take. I was just about to sign up for an overseas volunteering program when another job interview came up, at one of the bigger firms. This time I wasn't so fussed whether I got the job or not, as the idea of spending a year in Vietnam instead was really quite appealing. I did a little bit of preparation for the interview - looked clean and tidy and did some research into the firm and what they did. Instead of answering questions with answers from the self-help books that I had practiced and thought that a law firm would want to hear, I answered honestly and naturally. When the interviewer asked about my hobbies, instead of focusing on something that would demonstrate my teamwork or leadership abilities, I was honest and just said "salsa dancing". It turned out that the interviewer was also a dancer, and we spent the next twenty minutes chatting about the various classes and clubs around town. I breezed through the other questions, and I was offered a job with that firm the next day.

Several years later when I decided to move overseas, I didn't have the same urgent need to get a job as I did when I was a graduate. Interviews became much more relaxed, more of a conversation than an interrogation. The balance of power shifted, I was just me, and firms were competing to be the ones to hire me.

Here are a few things that I've learned through my various interview experiences (both good and bad) -

1. Relax. Try to think of a job interview the same way as you would trying on a pair of shoes. Sometimes shoes fit and sometimes they don't. You don't get nervous before you try on a pair of shoes in case it might not fit, so why feel any differently about a job interview? There are always other opportunities out there, and it's better to wait for them than try to squeeze into a job that doesn't fit.

2. Avoid eating or drinking in the interview. My interview with one of the partners of my law firm in Japan involved me having a brief chat with the managing partner, and then the partner I would work for taking me to lunch. We went to a place which had a set lunch, including (as most meals in Japan do) a lovely big of miso soup, which I managed to spill all over myself within 5 minutes of sitting down. I spent the rest of lunch with a big brown stain all over my lap, smelling slightly, and I could see my interviewer trying to hold back a giggle. I can't believe I still got the job after that (perhaps he was impressed with the way I handled it, or recognised that you can be a clutz and a good lawyer at the same time?).

3. Don't include any interests or experience on your CV that you're not really familiar with. In one interview, I found myself being grilled about technical aspects of a deal which I had listed on my CV but had only been peripherally involved in. They went into detail on an area of the deal which I hadn't been involved in, and where I knew nothing but a few catch phrases and acronyms. Needless to say, it was a thin envelope for that one…

4. Don't over prepare, it will only make you nervous. Look at the company's website, know who you're going to talk to, make sure you're familiar with your CV, know what the job involves, know how to get where you're going, but otherwise leave it at that.

5. Don't schedule interviews too close together, you might get the names of firms and interviewers made up. (You don't win any brownie points from Baker & McKenzie if you tell them how impressed you are with Clifford Chance's blue chip clients and stellar deal sheet…)

6. Video conference interviews can actually work out better than travelling to an interview. When you travel, you're tired and crumpled from the flight. A video conference gives you extra time to think, as you can sit still and not talking for a moment while you gather your thoughts, and the interviewer assumes the pause is because of a technical problem!

7. Dress up, but don't go too far. If you turn up professionally manicured and with your hair and make-up done by your favourite salon, you'll look like a barbie doll rather than yourself, and who wants to work with a Mattel figurine?

If you've an interview coming up, good luck! And remember - if it doesn't work out this time it's probably for the best. Why take a ratty pair of sneakers when there's a pair of Jimmy Choos just over the horizon.

Don't be too polite to say no

2010-05-15T22:02:00.000+01:00

I've always been someone who likes to please, and where I can I try and do what people want. This sometimes end up getting me into situations I really don't want to be in, just to be polite.

I lived in Vancouver for a year during University, on an exchange program at the University of British Columbia. During a study break, I took a trip with my friend Nicola up to Skagway, Alaska. It's at the end of the line for cruises up the coast of British Columbia, surrounded by snow-covered mountains. We went in off season, just because we thought "Skagway" would be cool place to have stamped in our passports. It was dark and cold, and there wasn't much to do other than drink, so what we did. At the bar we got to talking with two lumberjacks, with forgettable and forgotten names that were probably something like Bob and Ted. Neither my friend nor I was the least bit interested in Bob or Ted, but for some reason when they asked if we wanted to go for a drive, we agreed. An hour later, Nicola and I were squeezed into the middle of the front seat of a pick up truck, wedged in between two hairy guys in padded jackets with arms as thick as the trees they cut down. We drove for what seemed like hours through the middle of a snow-covered forest of pine trees, apparently looking for a ghost town. I spent the whole trip white-knuckled, absolutely certain that Nicola and I were going to end up with our faces on milk cartons. It was a completely stupid thing to do, even if it all turned out OK. Being friendly is one thing, but we put ourselves in real danger just because we didn't want to be rude.

When I lived in Sydney, a guy that I dated was very into adrenaline, he rode motorbikes ridiculously fast, surfed, dived, and generally got himself into all sorts of trouble. I was suitably impressed, and told him so. He somehow got the impression that I was a danger junkie myself, and asked me to go sky-diving with him. Without even thinking about it, I said yes, and once I'd set the ball in motion I didn't feel like I could back out. A couple of weeks later I found myself thousands of feet in the air in a spluttering little plane with the back door open, strapped to the front of a complete stranger who pushed me out of the door.

I still have a DVD that the instructor took of me on the way down, my eyes are hysterically wide, my lips are shut tight and my cheeks are wobbling in the breeze like Homer Simpson's belly. It's not an attractive look. I'll keep the DVD safely hidden away until I need it to explain to my children quite how stupidly it's possible for a quite intelligent person to behave.

(Picture with kind permission of Jerome.)

Be careful buying tea in China: don't fall for the Shanghai Tea Ceremony Scam

2010-05-02T15:31:00.001+01:00

We only had one weekend to see Shanghai, so a day tour seemed to be the most efficient way of getting around to see everything that we wanted to.   I knew from my experience in Bali that, on a day tour in Asia, the ratio of things I wanted to see to visits to shops where the tour guide getsa commission if you buy anything would be about 2:1. Still, after heated debates with my travel buddies, we signed up for a tour, assuming that as veteran travellers we'd be able to spot any scams and avoid them. Turns out I couldn't: like many travellers before me, I fell hook line and sinker for the Shanghai Tea Ceremony Scam.

In between a few interesting sights (the Bund, the Jade Buddha Temple and the Yuyuan Gardens), we were dropped off for half hour intervals at various "museums" around town. They each had a tiny room of not particularly interesting information about how pearls are collected, or the life cycle of a silk worm. The rest of the building was devoted to overpriced local handicrafts, all at more than ten times the price which you could get the same thing at the local market (even without haggling, which I'm particularly bad at). Still, the museums were bearable - the air-conditioning provided some relief from the humidity outside, and I had my ipod to keep me entertained when I lost interest in the silk weaving demonstrations within about 30 seconds of entering the building.  I was pretty smug when I clambered back onto the bus, certain that I'd beaten the system.

Unfortunately, it wasn't so, although I didn't realise this until I made it back to the hotel later. The second last stop on the tour was to a little temple where we would take part in a tea ceremony. I had been trying to limit my water intake during the day (to limit the number of times I would have to face Chinese public toilets) - possibly not the best idea on a stinking hot midsummer's day. By the time I made it to the tea ceremony, I was parched. The cup of weak green tea that I was handed was so sweet, refreshing and delicious - I felt a warm, overwhelming sense of wellbeing, I felt rejuvenated, full of energy. (In fact, in my state of dehydration I probably would have had exactly the same response to a can of Diet Coke from a vending machine, or any other liquid). I was determined to take some of that wonderful elixir home with me, and ended up spending a massive amount of money buying a packet of what I was assured was the same tea that I was drinking. Not wanting to be rude by bringing out my calculator in front of the nice tea lady, I didn't bother doing the currency conversion until later.   I was less than pleased with myself when I eventually worked out that I had bought a packet of green tea for $100. Still, even if it was expensive, I told myself it was a good buy, considering the quality.

When we got back to the hotel, I thought a nice, relaxing cup of my new wonder-tea would be exactly the thing to perk me up before a big night out. It wasn't. The tea I made was absolutely nothing like what we'd been given at the tea ceremony, even though I made it exactly in accordance with instructions. Rather than sweet and refreshing, this tea tasted like it had been made from dried grass clippings (collected from a gardener with a large dog, who hadn't bothered to scoop the poop before mowing the lawn).   It was rank, and one sip made me gag - the taste lingered all the way through two teeth brushings, and a rinse with Listerine. It was only several Vodka redbulls and a meal of sweet and sour pork that was finally able to defeat it.

When we packed to go back to Tokyo the next day, I ummed and aahed, but eventually ended up leaving my extravagantly-priced "green tea" behind me. Although I guess it could have come in handy for serving to visitors who had overstayed their welcome, it just wasn't worth the risk of bringing it through customs at Narita. It could have been almost anything - grass clippings, pot, mouldy tobacco, I had no way of knowing (and definitely wasn't prepared to taste it again to find out).

So, despite my certainty that I was wise to all of the scammers, I still fell victim to the Shanghai Tea Ceremony Scam, and ended up paying $100 for a single sip of the worst green tea on the planet. It's definitely the most expensive thing that I'll ever drink, and I'd pay money not to have to drink it again. If you were actually looking to buy tea in China (and weren't just a dehydrated backpacker who is seduced by a con-artist in a kimono offering liquid refreshment), despite the huge quantities of tea available, I imagine it would actually be quite difficult. Even if you were able to read Chinese, how could you actually be sure that what you'd tried would be the same as what you were sold? A taste test wouldn't really help - I did that (or at least thought I did) and still ended up buying mulch for about the same price as it would have cost for an equivalent weight in gold.

I've never been able to stomach green tea since my Shanghai tea fiasco (which is a pity, since it's very good for you - full of antioxidants apparently). Still, at least the experience taught me something valuable. Now I know to be more careful with my money when I'm travelling, and not to be too polite to say no when offered things I don't really want, or to bring out my calculator to figure out how much I'm going to be spending.  I like to think that lesson was actually worth the $100 that I wasted on that little bag full of dried garden clippings and dog turds masquerading as tea - thinking this makes me feel a little less like the gullible fool that I can sometimes prove myself to be.

Hello children, goodbye privacy

2010-04-24T15:37:00.003+01:00

As an expectant mother, I was well aware of the sacrifices that lay before me: sleepless nights, endless piles of stinky nappies, public tantrums, crayon all over the walls. One thing that I wasn't prepared for was the total and permanent loss of even the smallest semblance of privacy.

It starts long before the baby is born. A pregnant woman is seen as public property, and people have no hesitation in patting your growing belly, and commenting on your rapidly expanding waistline ("Are you sure it's not twins?"). Ultrasound scans of your baby are handed around willy-nilly and even posted on the internet, giving the world a closer look at your reproductive system that even your gynaecologist is ever going to see. At the birth (whether it's natural or through the sun-roof) a cast of thousands passes through, seeing you at your most vulnerable. You're poked and prodded in places that you didn't even know existed.

It doesn't stop when they hand you your little bundle, all wrapped up in pink or blue. If you can't quite figure out breastfeeding, a helpful midwife will burst into your room in the post-natal ward, grab your boob and thrust it into your baby's crying mouth. Once you're discharged, the Public Health Nurse will stop by your house (normally when it looks like a bomb has hit it - who has time for tidying with a newborn?), she'll ask you intimate questions, and give you a check-up to make sure that you're healing properly "down there".

Breastfeeding means that you pop your bosom out at the slightest whimper from your little one, regardless of where you are, almost without realising you're doing it. When a baby going through separation anxiety panics when you turn your back, and a closed door between you and her means fifteen minutes of inconsolable crying, you lose even those few minutes of private "contemplation" time in the bathroom. It's amazing how quickly you finish on the toilet when you can hear the patter of little feet coming up the corridor, ready to burst in on you... Long, luxurious bubble baths are replaced by a two minute shower, as there's nothing particularly relaxing about a bath when at any minute you know that a toddler is going to poke her head around the door, bathtoys in hand, and struggling to get out of her pyjamas to join you in the tub.

There's no respite. Even when you're little angel's tucked into her bed, safe and sound, you're not guaranteed a night snuggling in bed with your other half. At silly a.m., you'll be woken by a little tug on your arm, and roll over to see your little one, her hair as dishevelled as a mad scientist, arms up and desperate for a hug to take aware her scary dreams. Once she's in your bed, there's no getting her out again for the rest of the night - she sprawls out like a starfish in the middle of the bed, falling into an instant, deep sleep with a happy smile on her face, hogging the blanked, while you and your partner spend the rest of the night each balanced precariously on six inches at the side of the bed.

Dermot Whelan from the 98 Morning Crew has had a similar experience, and wrote this song about it which I can totally relate to (naturally enough, it has a bit of bad language in it...):

I love my children, and am thankful every time I see them (even at 3 a.m. in the morning...). But that doesn't mean that I don't sometimes get nostalgic for those days when I could disappear with a good book into a bubble bath and be undisturbed for hours, for Saturday mornings spent in bed, and for undisturbed moments of contemplation. Once we're through toddlerhood things are sure to improve, but until then I'll just have to resign myself to being public property, and enjoy my very rare moments to myself (or alone with my husband) as and when I can find them.

Don't be too ambitious with your travel reading

2010-04-18T10:36:00.002+01:00

If you're backpacking, you quickly learn to travel light. Jeans are replaced with light-weight and oh-so-unattractive cargo pants, heels are out and flip-flops are in, towels are an extravagant luxury when a sarong will do the job (and double as a skirt), and toothbrushes are decapitated to save the few extra grams from the unnecessary handle. When you can never carry more than one book at a time, the choice of reading material becomes particularly important - the last thing that you want is to be trapped on a 36 hour train journey with nothing more to keep you entertained than a flat Ipod and a book that looked good on the shelf but that you just can't get into.

This was the situation I found myself in when I travelled on an overnight sleeper train from Hong Kong to Guilin in China (although it was a couple of years before Ipods, and my Walkman had long ago been sacrificed to get my backpack to a manageable weight). I'd finished my easy-reading, chick-lit (Last Chance Saloon, by Marian Keyes) during one of my long, horrible nights at the Chungking Mansions, and had traded it into another backpacker for something a little more high-brow (Oscar and Lucinda, by Peter Carey). This was a book that one of my more literary friends at University had been recommending to me since it was first published, so I thought it was a pretty safe bet for a long train ride. Unfortunately, I just couldn't get into it. Something about Carey's writing style grated, and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't lose myself in the book. The slightest noise around me would bring me back: the nausea-inducing hock and splat as old men spat their phlegm onto the carriage floor, loud irregular snoring from the berths around me, announcements over the tannoy so garbled that I couldn't have understood them even if they were in English, whispered Cantonese conversations that carried so far they may as well as have been shouted. I couldn't even finish the first chapter, and was left with no alternative than to put the book away, pretend to sleep, and try to tune out the Opus in an Overcrowded Chinese Sleeper Carriage for the 30 hours that it took to get to Guilin. When I arrived in Yangshuo I tried my best to trade Oscar and Lucinda in, but nobody would take it - I was stuck with it until I got to Macau and found a second-hand English language bookshop.

After that, I was a lot more careful with the books that I took travelling with me, and those that I accepted as an exchange. Rather than trying out completely new books, I've tended to bring either books I've already started and have been enjoying, or books that I've read before and know that I can easily lose myself in. A few of my favourites are:

Sushi for Beginners, by Marian Keyes. It's well-written, light-hearted chick-lit that I can read over and over again.
The Lord of the Rings, by JRR Tolkien. This is the classic fantasy novel, incredibly absorbing and entertaining. No matter how many times I read it, I get so caught up in the adventure of Tolkien's beautifully created world that I lose track of everything around me. It's also long enough that it can do you for the whole trip, without any need to be bartering it for something else. This tends to be a "love it or hate it" book though, so if you've not read it before, you might be better off either starting it before you go, or taking something else. It's got quite a bit of weight to it, so it's not one you'd want to be carrying about if you don't enjoy it.
A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving. This is Irving at his best, and well on its way to becoming an American classic. It's intricately weaved plotlines and subtle humour are completely engaging, the themes of the book are thought-provoking, and Owen Meany is perhaps the most memorable character that I've come across.
The Stand, by Stephen King. This tells the story of an apocalptic man-made plague which is accidentally unleashed, killing 99% of the world's populations. The survivor's stories are incredibly moving and exciting, and reading this can make even the longest trip pass by painlessly. This is definitely a "try before you fly" book though, as it's quite weighty and Stephen King's fairly descriptive writing can be a little much for the squeamish.
Anything written by Bill Bryson, particularly if it's about where you're going to. I read his Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe while I was backpacking around Western Europe for the first time, and it was incredibly funny and made me appreciate what I was seeing so much more. His books on England, Australia and small town America are also very entertaining (although I take exception to his fairly negative review on Canberra, my home town. It's a lovely place to grow up, even if it's not the most exciting place - it's had an incredibly positive influence on my life by motivating me to get out and see the rest of the world!)
The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams. This is light-hearted satire at its best, with a sci-fi theme. I highly recommend it, even if you're not normally a science fiction buff (but if you're not, you'd probably want to read a chapter or two before you board the plane, just to be on the safe side).

(My literary friend gave me a copy of Oscar and Lucinda for Christmas that year: I hadn't had the heart to tell her what I thought of it. It's still sitting on my shelf gathering dust - although now that money is becoming tigheter and I've promised my husband that I won't buy any new books until I've read everything on my shelf, I may have to tackle it again. Perhaps I'll be able to appreciate it more this time, without the accompanying Chinese train concerto...)

Focus on the child and not the disability

2010-04-10T12:20:00.003+01:00

Like most first-time mothers I had spent a lot of my pregnancy worrying. I was careful to avoid the slightest thing that might have harmed my little one in any way. I stuck to a special diet, followed doctor's orders to the letter, and basically treated myself like an incubator for 40 weeks. So when my little girl was born, and they whisked her out of my arms and up to the neonatal intensive care unit, I was completely floored. Each time the doctors came in to see us, with another test result and more bad news, they were keen to point out that it was not my fault, that I hadn't done anything wrong. This didn't make me feel any better. My little girl was disabled, and my dreams for her future were shattered.

The ten days when my little girl was in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) are a blur now. She was in an isolation chamber because I had been exposed to chicken pox about a week before she had been born. It was two days before I could even go up and see her, the longest 48 hours of my life. The pictures that my husband had been sending to my mobile phone had done nothing more than scare me, my poor little girl was covered with tubes and sensors, and with a feeding tube plastered onto her cheek. I lay in my hospital bed, in a morphine haze from my cesarean, crying for my little girl upstairs being poked and prodded and tested, while all the other newborns in the post-natal ward were asleep content in their cribs next to their mothers. My husband was amazing during that time, he saw the best of the situation: our little girl was in good hands, she had problems but they weren't life-threatening, and we were strong enough to be able to get through whatever happened. I tried to make myself feel the same, but just couldn't.

When I was let out of quarantine and allowed up to the NICU, I practically ran up the stairs, not feeling the pain from the wound in my stomach. There she was, sleeping all bundled up in an oversize pink baby-gro, looking just like any other baby (but cuter, of course). It's only when she awoke and started to cry that I could see the cleft palate that the doctors had mentioned - and once I'd seen it I couldn't ignore it. The extent of the rest of her problems had only become apparent when the test results started coming back, and I dreaded each time the doctors would come in to see us, always looking so grave. Initially it was nothing but bad news: one of her lungs had never formed, her spine was so crooked that she would probably never walk, an important part of her brain hadn't formed properly and she may have learning disabilities, she had heart problems. They initially suspected that her symptoms were caused by a chromosone problem, but her results came back normal. They just didn't know what was wrong, and couldn't predict how things would work out for our little girl. It was months before the doctors were able to give us a diagnosis: Goldenhar Syndrome. It's a very rare condition which affects people in different ways, often leading to facial abnormalities but also (as in my little girl's case) affecting internal organs and the spine.

When I looked at my little baby, my vision was clouded by my fears for her future. I couldn't enjoy her smiles and laughs, as I saw through to her cleft palate and the surgery that she was going to have to endure. I watched in agony as she struggled to sit up, willing her forward but at the same time trying to resign myself to what would happen if she couldn't make it. She was in and out of hospital, for outpatients visits, for tests and when she developed chest infections (potentially life-threatening for a person with one lung). We couldn't manage the schedule of medical appointments with both my husband and I working, and so my husband had to resign to become a full-time carer for her.

We had some good news along the way too: a more detailed MRI ruled out any problems in our daughter's brain (either the problem corrected itself, or the original scan hadn't been accurate). She sat up and walked right on schedule. She has some problems with her speech from the cleft palate, but she's receiving regular therapy from the wonderful people at Enable Ireland. Although if you look very carefully, you can still see that she's slightly crooked (and she probably always will be) - but she isn't restricted in what she can do and she is as active as any normal two year old.

All the self-help books say that it's completely normal to feel grief if your child is born with special needs. You've lost the opportunity for certain dreams that you had for your child to be fulfilled. I just wish that I'd not been so being blinded by her differences and my fears for her future at first, and that I could have had more hope (like my husband did). Now when I look my little girl, I don't see her physical differences. I see a gorgeous, happy, mischevious little girl who loves climbing and running and who is completely obsessed with Toy Story and Peppa Pig. She is perfect, and makes me smile every day. I couldn't wish for anything better.

The only thing you have to cover in the onsen is your tattoo

2010-04-03T11:44:00.000+01:00

I was definitely a fish out of water during my few years living in Tokyo. Compared to the compact, elegantly styled, and very proper Japanese girls, I might as well have been from a different species: tall, blonde, voluptuous, fairly ragged, and blundering through social situations with the same grace and poise as a toddler. Like a toddler, with time I became a little more polished, but there was nothing at all that I could do about the way that I looked. That was made completely clear to me, in the shocked silence, pointing and snickering behind raised hands that greeted me the first time that I screwed up my courage to join the crowds in their birthday suits at the hot springs.

I had no idea what the issue was, and rushed through my shower before climbing into the steaming thermal spring, covering myself as best I could with a flannel, red-faced from embarrassment rather than the heat. I know I had curves where Japanese women were boyishly flat, but surely they had seen breasts before? Things quietened down as I sat with my back to the wall, doing the best I could to cover my more delicate areas with a square flannel. Nevertheless, one of the receptionists bustled her way into the onsen and asked me in faltering English if she could speak to me.

It turns out that it wasn't my physique, or onsen etiquette, that the other bathers had complained about. They had caught sight of the quite modestly-sized tattoo in the small of my back (a black, stylised Tsimshian First Nations design of an eagle, representing strength, intelligence, loyalty and wisdom). Although I had known that in Japanese society it is very uncommon for people to have tattoos (unless they are part of the Yakuza crime gangs), I hadn't realised that the fear of the Yakuza was such that any sight of a tattoo would be enough to have you completely shunned even if I was as far from a Japanese mafioso as it was physically possible to get. I would only be allowed back into the hot spring if I completely covered over the tattoo with sticking plaster. It was no problem at all for everything else that God gave me to be free for all to see, but my little bit of ink had to be completely hidden so as to avoid offending the other women.

Onsens are a wonderfully relaxing experience, the hot water soaks away all the cares in the world and you emerge feeling refreshed and renewed. Unfortunately my enjoyment of them was slightly lessened by the fact that, after a soak, I would have to endure the pain of pulling a huge bandaid off the small of my back afterwards. Somehow the volcanic water seemed to make the bandaid stick like superglue, and I would have a red, raised, itchy rash for a week afterwards. Eventually I managed to find a few smaller onsens, attached to Japanese-style ryokan hotels, which were generally private enough that there would be nobody there who would feel the need to rat me out. Still, I always kept my back to the wall, or wandered around with my hand covering the small of my back like I had sciatica, dreading a high pitched "Excuse me" from a lady carrying a bandaid.

If you really want to go somewhere, don't wait for company

2010-03-27T09:29:00.000Z

Travel buddies are fantastic, they are co-conspirators, someone to share the wonder of the new experiences that await on every day of the trip. After the trip is over, your travel buddy is also much less likely than the rest of your friends to lapse into a coma when you share your stories from the road, or to roll their eyes when you start a sentence with "That reminds me of a time when I was in...". However, you should never let the lack of a travel buddy hold you back if there's somewhere in particular that you want to go. If you do, you'll always regret the opportunities that you've missed out on, just for fear of travelling alone.

I've done a fair amount of solo travelling, and there are definitely times when I prefer it to travelling with company. The first few times I did it were accidental - my travel buddy backed out at the last minute, after all the arrangements had been made and paid for. After much angst, I ended up alone in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Paris, France; and Bali, Indonesia. Despite my initial trepidations, those trips were actually the most rewarding of any that I have been on. Forced to stand on my own two feet, I had no choice but to get out and meet people. Staying in hostels definitely helped, as there was always people to chat with who were travelling around and who had great stories and tips. I was able to choose exactly what I wanted to do and when I wanted to do it. I skipped modern art museums and spent entire afternoons wandering around the markets haggling, I got into passionate debates with new-found friends over caiparhenas, instead of waiting in the queue for the Eiffel Tower I took a long, luxurious stroll along the Seine. I enjoyed every minute.

Later, even when I was travelling with a friend I would generally include a bit of time travelling by myself at the start of end of the trip. I had an amazing time travelling through Vietnam with my friend Jen, but when she went back to Australia I stayed on, and then travelled to Hong Kong and up to Yangshuo in China. Although Hong Kong was an absolute disaster, Yangshuo was fantastic and definitely worth the wait. I went cycling through the most beautiful landscape I've ever seen, went fishing with cormorants, and swam in a pond inside a cave. Some of the backpackers I met while I was Yangshuo, from Denmark, Scotland and Italy, were absolutely amazing, and I stayed in touch with them for many years.

I've never once regretted taking a trip by myself, although you do of course need to be a little more careful, and you definitely need to force yourself to be a ltitle more outgoing than you would if you could rely upon your travel buddy. What I do regret are the trips which have never gotten beyond the planning stage, or which I've cancelled, because I couldn't find anyone else who wanted to go there, or because my friend piked. Lost opportunities like these can't be recaptured, once family and career become top priority - I wish that I'd realised earlier that travelling by yourself can be just as much, if not more, fun and rewarding as travelling with friends.

See the Nazca Lines on an empty belly

2010-03-20T09:36:00.001Z

It was one of the highlights on my Tucan tour around South America - a light plane flight over the Nazca lines. There is a mystery associated with this series of ancient carvings etched into the Nazca Desert of Peru, which were made two thousand years ago and yet seem designed to be seen only from the air, and I was excited to have the opportunity to see them for myself.

Unfortunately, I didn't pay attention to the guide, and while I waited my turn to climb on board the slightly rickety light plane, I whiled away the time over a packet of crisps. My excitement as the plane clambered into the air was short-lived, as my stomach rebelled against the change in air pressure and sudden drops as we were tossed about above the desert. Instead of getting the chance to enjoy the sylized figures of hummingbirds, spiders, monkeys and llamas, I spent the flight becoming intimately acquainted with the inside of the sick bags that were wedged helpfully down next to each seat. The other passengers, who had stronger constitutions than I did and didn't indulge in a packet full of greasy starch before setting out, came back awe-inspired. I came back green, and disappointed, having only had the briefest glimpses of the lines in between heaves (hence the borrowed picture to accompany the story - unfortunately I didn't get a chance to even get my camera out).

So now I know, you should see the Nazca Lines on an empty belly, or not at all. This same principle applies to anything that you see from the vantage point of any small plane or helicopter. (My money was similarly wasted when I took a helicopter flight over the Iguazu falls, and my last Dash-8 flight between Sydney and Canberra was not an experience I'd want to repeat in a hurry.) I can't foresee a need for me to head up in a light plane any time soon (as my life is much more sedate than it once was), but I'll definitely be a bit more careful if I do.

(Photo by toyway.)

Staring at the line(s) on a pregnancy test won't change the result

2010-03-13T21:25:00.003Z

It's impossible to be ambivalent when you're taking a pregnancy test: no matter your circumstances, you're passionately hoping for either one line or two. The anxiety is intense, there's a rush of adrenaline as you wait, and those three minutes are the longest in your life: will it be there, or won't it? If you're trying to conceive, and are desperately hoping for your BFP ("big fat positive") every month, the waiting is torture. And when the three minutes are finally up, it's amazing what you can convince yourself is a faint line, if that's what you want to see and if you look long and hard enough.

If you test too early, a faint positive is almost invisible, and as you sit there staring, holding the test at different angles to try and catch the strongest light, it's very easy to imagine that you see one. The longer you look, the more you see - whether there's anything there or not.  If you're hoping to continue your child-free life for a little longer, on the other hand, you're likely to keep staring at your stick wishing away a second line that's there as clear as day, hoping that it's just there temporarily to show that the test is working and will disappear. It doesn't, the same way that an invisible line that's not there after 3 minutes doesn't magically appear after half an hour. (Don't, whatever you do, go back to the bin and double check a couple of hours later - that's bordering on obsessive compulsive...).

If you're not convinced of the result, wait and do another test in a couple of days.  It won't do any good to test again on the same day, nothing's going to chance in a couple of hours. You'll just waste your money, and end up disappointed - I know, after all the money that I've spent on First Reponse Early Pregnancy Tests and Clear Blue Digitals the owner of my local Boots will be thanking me for my repeat business from his villa in the south of France. I've even tested again a couple of days after I've gotten my BFP, just to make sure that I'm still pregnant.

Trying to conceive - or trying not to - is a very stressful business, and psychosomatic symptoms and pregnancy tests that lend themselves to interpretation combine to make it even worse.  It's so much easier if you can be patient and wait to test until well after a missed period, so that you can be sure that the pregnancy test result is right. At least then you won't be inclined to sit staring at the stick, seeing lines where there are none, and not believing your eyes. You'll save yourself a lot of angst, and an awful lot of money too.

Rethink the gift voucher, unless you want to take a punt on the store surviving the recession

2010-03-06T08:30:00.002Z

When a store sells you a gift voucher, they dress it up as a thoughtful present, a way to ensure that the recipient has the freedom to make their own decision on what they would like. Really, it's no more thoughtful than a card full of cash, the only thing that you've done is reduce the places where the recipient can spend it. You've also given an interest-free, unsecured loan to the store, and one which there is about a fair chance will never be repaid (either because the store goes out of business, or because of the fine print).

I was in Stephens Green Shopping Centre on Saturday, with gift vouchers from Christmas burning a hole in my pocket. Unusually, and luckily, none of my gift vouchers were from Hughes & Hughes - this massive, iconic Irish chain of bookstores has just gone out of business. Overnight, a receiver was appointed, and 225 staff all lost their jobs.

Anybody who is still holding onto their Hughes & Hughes gift vouchers now might as well be walking around with toilet paper in their wallet. (Actually, they'd be better off if they were - at least toilet paper is useful for something...) They'll be able to get in the queue with all of the other unsecured creditors, in the hope that they may be able to recover something from the receiver. If they get so much as one or two cents for each Euro I'd be surprised - chances are that Hughes & Hughes' bankers will have security over pretty much everything, and that everyone else will be "out of the money".

I've not had much luck with gift vouchers, and as a result now I only ever buy the "All for One" vouchers that they sell at the Post Office, which you can use anywhere. Too many times I've turned up to redeem my gift voucher only to find it invalid, expired, or the store not there any more.

My husband bought me a gift voucher to use at The Pregnancy Store on Dawson Street when we found out we were expecting our second child. I loved going in there while I was expecting my first baby, they had some great maternity clothes, and the hot stone massages were an hour of heaven. For safety reasons I had to wait until my second trimester before I could have a massage, and knowing that I had that to look forward to got me through the morning sickness and various other early pregnancy miseries. But when I rang up to book my massage, the call went unanswered. I waddled down to Dawson Street one Saturday, and the store was closed. The store's website said that they had closed down, but that vouchers could be redeemed by contacting an e-mail address. My e-mail went unanswered - instead of a wonderful hour-long relaxing massage, all I had was a pink piece of paper with an IOU, never to be fulfilled, and a lot of disappointment.

In the current economic climate, it would probably be a good idea to think about redeeming your gift vouchers sooner rather than later (hence my shopping spree last weekend). You might lose your opportunity to use them at all if you leave them sitting in your drawer for too long (or even for quite a short time - 3 months was all it took for my Pregnancy Store voucher). If that happens, it's like the person who bought you the voucher has just made a gift of the money to the shop (or more realistically, to the shop's banks). Despite having received a "thoughtful" gift, you end up with nothing at all, other than a lot of frustration and angst.

From now on if I can't be bothered putting in the effort to shop for a personalised gift, I'll be giving a card full of money (or an All for One voucher). Cash may not look quite as nice, but at least I know that the money won't be locked up in the accounts of a store that's gone into receivership, and there's no fine print limiting when and where it can be spent.