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At the risk of giving away the ending, this is just a quick note to say that–in the unlikely event that anyone out there actually cares–we did manage to get out of South America alive and in fact have made it as far as Singapore, where we’re staying with friends before we land in Melbourne next week.

We went the long way round, via Southport and then London, to see everyone for one last time, abuse everyone’s hospitality with a second set of “leaving drinks”, and say goodbye Piccadilly and farewell Leicester Square, as it were. We then headed on east to make it three continents in ten days. On Monday that will be four in two weeks (we’re only missing North America, Africa and Antarctica–truly we are screwing the planet one air mile at a time…)

I will eventually get round to writing up what happened after we left BA, though. And yeah, I know I’ve said that before–never did finish documenting our Cuba trip two years ago–but this time it might actually happen, as looking at how few Melbourne-based tech writer jobs seem to be lingering on the job sites it looks like I’ll have some time on my hands over the next few weeks/months…

There was a time–let’s call it 8.20pm–when, still standing outside our hotel in the centre of Mendoza vainly waving at every full taxi that passed us, we started to think that maybe we weren’t going to be catching our 8.30 overnight bus to Rosario on the other side of the country.

Gone, by this point, were the days when we used to turn up at the bus station an hour or so before departure. We’d learnt that there was really no point in being early and had started cutting things increasingly fine but we’d always been able to jump straight into a taxi and we hadn’t missed a bus.

Yet.

Which was going to be annoying, as we’d paid a whopping A$190 each (about thirty quid) to travel in a sleeper. Argentine buses come in a variety of flavours, with the cheapest, semi cama, being like coaches back in the UK. Next up from that is the cama, which although it literally means “bed” really just means a slightly bigger seat that reclines a bit further. The best, though are the cama suite buses, where the seat goes completely flat and they serve you wine and hot food. It’s well worth the extra pesos if you’re travelling overnight, but not such good value if you miss it.

At 8.25 an empty taxi passed, and responded to my frantic waving by slowing down.

As we threw the bags into the back seats, I jumped into the front and started explaining in my still broken Spanish how we were running a bit late for our bus.

Of course every red light was against us. As we pulled up to one the driver asked us what time our bus left.

“Er, now?” I replied.

And upon hearing the name of the bus company, CATA, he shook his head and declared that he thought we might be out of luck. That company is “muy o’clock” he said, pointing at his watch.

But he let us out anyway around the back of the station (even though by this point it was already 8.35 and we’d almost given up hope) and we legged it with our packs past 25 other platforms, only to see a CATA bus pulling out of the bus station and heading into the distance.

“¿Ha salido el autobus para Rosario?” I asked a bloke wearing a CATA uniform who just sort of shrugged at me in response.

And then I realised that I was standing next to it. Somehow it was still here (and apparently it was just as well I hadn’t run after the other bus shouting “Stop!”). As Sal arrived behind me, we threw the packs into the hold and collapsed into our very comfortable seats. Totally out of breath and quite unable to believe that we’d made it.

And then the bus sat there for another 20 minutes before it left.

*

Our luck began to run out when we got to Rosario, though. As I opened my wallet to pay for the taxi into the centre of town, I realised that the 10 peso note I thought I had in my wallet was actually a 2. Apparently in my panic the previous night I had given either the taxi driver or the guy who puts your bags in the hold of the bus a huge unintended tip.

The only other note in my wallet was a 50, which of course the taxi driver couldn’t change. He turned out to be the world’s most understanding taxi driver, though, as he said he’d just take whatever I had–the 2 peso note and a handful of change. When I asked him if he was sure, he said “it’s only five pesos…”

It was probably just as well I hadn’t gone off to try to change the 50, though, because when we did try to spend it on breakfast a few hours later it turned out to be our first fake note of the trip so far.

“Es falso”, said the girl in the café, laughing and pointing at it. “Muy falso”.

On further inspection, this turned out to be true. It had been amateurishly cut to the wrong size, looked and felt fake, and the foil strip had been drawn on in felt tip.

Oops.

As part of my tireless work for my soon to be ex-company’s social committee, I happened upon an email yesterday advertising the services of this company. It’s good to know that if we ever need to book Chas n’ Dave for an event you can get them playing live for just three grand (although perhaps that figure should be taken with a tiny pinch of salt given that they are also quoting £5,000 – £6,000 for Edwin Starr, and I’m not sure he gives the best performances these days, considering he’s been dead for five years).

Elsewhere on the site, there’s some fun to be had with their lookalikes. I can’t quite believe that there is such demand that they need two Hitlers on their books, and I’m not too sure how good a lookalike this guy is of Jesus, but I’m most amused by Salman Rushdie, who clearly does so well out of his lookalike career that he could only afford £2.50 to get his portfolio shot done in a photo booth.

Oh, and I can’t imagine that the Gary Glitter tribute act that they have on their books gets much work these days. Perfect for children’s parties, perhaps…?

Monday 21st April: Conservative leader David Cameron has vowed to “stop the government in its tracks” and make them think again over the axing of the 10p income tax band. He said he would fight in Parliament for compensation for those affected by the “disgraceful” move.

Wednesday 23rd April: The prime minister has defended moves to compensate pensioners, young people and childless people on low incomes who lost out from the 10p tax rate’s axing. Gordon Brown’s offer of backdated help came amid a continuing rebellion from Labour MPs over the issue. Tory leader David Cameron said the PM only acted to avoid defeat on it next week and accused him of “weakness, dithering and indecision”.

I’m fascinated by the current ongoing fuss about the changes to the UK income tax bands that came in at the start of this month. It provides a nice little insight into how politics works.

In the above case, for example:

– opposition politician asks for something
– ruling politician does the thing he was asked to do
– opposition politician accuses him of being weak because he did the thing he was asked to do by opposition politician

The funny thing is that these changes were announced a full twelve months ago.

It was obvious to me at the time that the changes would disproportionately affect anyone on a low income (specifically, anyone earning around £7/8K, who would previously have paid all their tax at 10% and will now pay 20% on all of their £2K-ish taxable income), while anyone earning towards the top end of the basic rate, or paying tax at the higher rate, will be better off (because the negative effect of the first £2K of taxable income being taxed at 20% instead of 10% will be cancelled out by the rest of the basic rate being at 20% rather than 22%).

So it seems odd that no one found the time to make a fuss about this at any point over the last year, when it might theoretically have been reversible. It’s a bit late now, isn’t it? Unless of course you don’t really care what happens to people on low incomes and are only really interested in jumping on the bandwagon to exploit any given situation for maximum political gain…

So. Sighs of relief all round yesterday when the Australians finally got round to granting my visa. Something of a relief, really, given that we’d already resigned, given notice on our flat, booked our flights for our big trip to South America next month as well as our one way tickets to Melbourne in October, organised our leaving drinks, and ordered 26 packing boxes from Freedom Shipping and started filling them with assorted tat.

Prior to yesterday, the last communication I’d had from Australia House had been back in February, when they sent me a form letter confirming that they were processing my application. It ended with a note reminding me that the visa processing people “do not recommend that you take any irreversible action during the processing of your application (such as leaving your employment, purchasing airline tickets, or selling your property) until and unless it has been confirmed in writing that your visa has been granted” so obviously that was advice that I took to heart.

Having said that, given that the only real requirements for this particular visa are that you (a) have been living with an Australian for at least a year, (b) don’t have a criminal record, and (c) don’t have TB, I was always fairly confident that I might just scrape through.

When we’ve previously got the same type of “dirty de-facto” visa for Sal to allow her to stay in the UK, it’s merely involved filling in an application form and sending in some post addressed to the two of us to prove we live at the same address. The Australians, on the other hand, make you jump through a few extra hoops, like getting Australian citizens to write statutory declarations confirming that yours is not a sham relationship.

They even ask you this directly. Question 74 on form 47SP, the main application form, reads:

74: Did you enter into this relationship with your partner solely to gain permanent residence in Australia?

Yes | No

Hmm. Let me think about that one for a moment…

They’re also quite big on the character requirement. This mostly means that you have to get police checks to prove that you don’t have a criminal record, but they also make you fill in the glorious Form 80, which includes such gems as:

27: Give details of all visits (including short stays) to countries outside Australia for the last 10 years (If insufficient space, give details on an attachment)

There are 7 lines for you to fill in the details.

Quite how they expect you to remember everywhere you’ve been for the last 10 years, I don’t know (especially if you happen to live in a continent that allows freedom of movement between member states and therefore don’t have any stamps in your passport for half of those trips…) My digital photos go back about 5 years, but beyond that I was mostly guessing. I vaguely remember what I did in 1998, but not to the day… And after I got to 36 trips on my attachment, I gave up.

The health checks were fun too. I went to a chap on Harley Street who apparently does nothing else but health checks for visa applicants. After the most cursory of medical examinations, during which he listened to my breathing for all of five seconds, basically just asked me if I had any health problems and then ticked “normal” on all the boxes on the form, he sent me on my way £140 lighter to get my chest X-Rays done down the road at another business that apparently exists solely to X-Ray visa applicants (this one was ironically staffed entirely by Australians, who all sounded exactly like the snobby shop assistants off Kath and Kim). With all that out of the way I just had to go back down the road to let a young New Zealander extract some blood from my arm and I was done, the whole process having taken little over half an hour.

So that’s it then. We really are officially going now. We leave London on the 18th May to head north for a few days, then fly to Peru on the 22nd for four months of flitting around South America before flying out of Sao Paulo on the 22nd September for a brief return to the UK (first to Southport and then back to London on the 26th September for a final weekend here). Our one way flights start from Heathrow on the 1st October, and after a few days in Singapore to see our friends who’ve just moved there (because, you know, 4 months’ holiday wasn’t quite enough), we’ll finally get to Melbourne, penniless, on Monday the 6th of October…

So I guess it’s just as well that I our plans to be in South America meant that I wasn’t trying for a Glastonbury ticket this year (although, unbelievably, tickets appear to still be available 24 hours after going on sale, so I guess all that rain last year and Jay-Z must really have scared people away). I couldn’t have bought one from home on Sunday morning if I had wanted to, though, because we’ve had no internets or TV service from our wonderful provider Tiscali since last Thursday.

It’s quite a dull story, really (if you care, you can read my angry post on their support forum about it here, and my reply to someone else’s angry forum post here), but the abbreviated story is that… I used to be a Homechoice customer. Tiscali bought Homechoice, and after running both sets of equipment in the phone exchanges for a bit have started moving Homechoice customers over to the Tiscali network. Last Wednesday was my turn, and since then, I’ve had no service.

Perhaps I’ve been switched to their special “No Service” internet plan: it’s a snip at £24.99 a month, and it’s great so long as you never want to watch the TV channels or use the internet. Ideal for the busy young professional who’s hardly in anyway…

Although I haven’t had any service from them, I have got to listen a lot of Leona Lewis while waiting on hold. More Leona than anyone should ever have to listen to, really, and the only reward for this torture is that I eventually get to speak to someone utterly clueless (and apparently lacking any basic training in how their systems work) in tech support who clearly knows less about Homechoice than I do.

So anyway, if there is anyone out there considering Tiscali as an ISP, then do my a favour and don’t bother. Utter, utter rubbish.

*****

Update (07 April): I finally got my TV and internet services back yesterday, after a massively frustrating week waiting on hold, becoming intimately acquainted with the works of Leona Lewis, and speaking to poorly-trained customer service staff.

It turned out to be a problem affecting all the users who were migrated last week, but Tiscali didn’t bother communicating that to the affected users (“all aspects of our service are working correctly” said their website status page and automated fault phone line) or even their own staff. Amusingly, at one point I spoke to someone on the upgrade/migration support line who told me that everything was working fine, and then a few minutes later to someone in a different part of support who told me that there was a problem affecting all the recently migrated users. When I asked him why his colleague on the upgrade/migration support line didn’t know about a problem affecting all upgraded users, he told me that that team “isn’t kept in the loop”. Brilliant…

So anyway. This is a message to the internets: if you are considering using Tiscali’s services, please don’t. And if Tiscali purchase a company whose services you do use, please leave and go somewhere else. Thanks…

Check that timestamp. They just got in there with a minute to go.

Update:

It wasn’t just me. This week’s Popbitch says:

—————————————————–
Lily Allen’s new material is said to be “dance-
oriented”. (Her TV show’s re-commissioning was on 1st
April. BBC staff thought it was an April Fools joke.)
—————————————————–

It looks like we’ll be gone before it gets to the last couple of episodes, but I’m still delighted to see The Apprentice back on telly. I stayed up late last night when I got in to watch the first one, while a still sick Sal went straight to bed. Of course it’s the same old stuff as every other year–the same hapless, arrogant, twats giving it 110% all the way while they make catastrophically idiotic decisions and then get rightly ridiculed by siralan in the boardroom, but it’s entertaining stuff anyway.

I’d love to write something witty, but I’ll leave that to Andrew Collins and the Watch With Mothers lot, who’ve beaten me to it.

What I will write about, a bit, is the other TV that I’ve been enjoying recently. Since getting back from Oz earlier in the month, Sal and I have been watching the excellent Underbelly, a dramatisation of the retributional gangland killings that took place in Melbourne for about 10 years from the mid nineties onwards.

It’s cracking TV, but all the more remarkable for the fact that–so far as I can tell from reading old news reports off The Age website–much of what is depicted in the show actually happened, and did so pretty much the way it’s presented.

They’ve even chosen to use the real names of all the people involved, which is an interesting decision given that there are still ongoing legal proceedings involving some of these people (the ones who aren’t either dead or in prison, at least, although even some of the dead ones have a part to play in some of the ongoing cases…). Having said that, perhaps you don’t have to be totally cynical to wonder whether this might not have been a deliberate calculated move, given the publicity that was generated for the show once Channel 9 had been indefinitely banned from broadcasting it in the state of Victoria by the Australian Supreme Court. I also wonder if it is a complete coincidence that suitably technically savvy Victorians have conveniently been able to watch the show anyway, given that there were high-quality torrents of the first 10 episodes up on Mininova before even half of them had been shown on TV in the other Australian states (and the only versions of episodes 11 – 13 that I’ve seen out there so far must have been leaked by someone inside the production company, given that they are rough cuts with an incomplete soundtrack and a timer running on the bottom of the screen).

It’s also interesting to us because many of the events took place in Sal’s bits of Melbourne, and some of the show was filmed in Essendon itself. One of the characters, for example, is Jason Moran, who ends up getting shot dead in front of his children (who had just finished an aussie rules game) in his van in the car park of the Cross Keys Hotel on Pascoe Vale Road. Yeah, that’d be the same Cross Keys Hotel that we’d just been to a few weeks ago for Sal’s dad’s birthday drinks…

Now, having seen the first 10 episodes, we just have the tricky decision of whether to watch those unfinished final 3 now, or wait 4-6 weeks for Australian TV to catch up so we can watch the proper ones. Decisions, decisions…

Right. If the NME tells you that Danny Goffey and Gaz Coombes of Supergrass are going to busk in Covent Garden at lunchtime, then don’t listen to them, because (as the updated news story now says), the band will be at the Royal Festival Hall instead, but you’ll go all the way over to Covent Garden and hang around for 15 minutes with some other confused people and won’t find out what’s really going on until the two paps who have also been given duff information find out where the band really are and you then end up legging it down to Embankment and over the bridge to see what remains of the busking gig…

Ah well. I might have missed the start, but it was still a more interesting use of my lunch hour than normal. I made it across to the other side of the river just in time to see Danny and Gaz (performing as the Diamond Hoo Ha Men for charity on the BBC’s Culture Show’s “let’s see how much real bands can make busking” spot) doing Beat It, which they then followed with what they described as “covers” of this band they really like called Supergrass–Lenny, Caught By The Fuzz and Diamond Hoo Ha Men.

At the end of the gig, as I hung around to watch them passing the hat around to collect for homeless charity Crisis, I overheard some confused American tourists:

Middle-aged American Lady: Who are they? They’ve got white jumpsuits on and one of them says “Randy” and the other one says “Duke”. Who are they?
American Lady’s Husband: I think they’re off TV.

American Lady: Well if they’re off TV why are they outside collecting money? That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Obviously the concept of “collecting for charity” hasn’t quite made it across the Atlantic…

When XFM woke me up this morning, the first thing I consciously heard was Heather Mills talking about her divorce settlement:

Beatrice only gets £35,000 a year – so obviously she’s meant to travel B class while her father travels A class, but obviously I will pay for that.

Gosh.

How will poor 4 year old Beatrice survive on a lowly £35K + nanny and school fees?