Lost in translation

this indicates that there is a plan to evacuate a moving train

Lost in Translation

an innovative approach to recycling.... pets in the yellow bin 

Park Run

Today I undertook my first bit of park run tourism and ran the St Peters Parkrun in Sydney. Parkrun is weekly free 5 kilometres run on a Saturday morning, most of the runs are in the UK there are runs all over the world. When you register for Parkrun you get a bar code that works everywhere and they e-mail you the times you get. The event is put on by volunteers many of whom run as well as volunteering each week. I have been working hard on my weight this year and that has brought my times down from 29 and a bit to 25 and a bit with a new PB of 24:50 last week.

This was going to be my 125^th Parkrun. And from my hotel I took the train into Sydney and then back out to St Peters where the parkrun was due to start at 9AM.  At the interchange station I met a woman who was down from Brisbane and had chosen to run the event as well. On arrival at the park we were told it was a smaller group as there was a running festival at Bondi beach the next day…. Not that small I guess it was about 200 people. The run was a two-lap course on pathways in a park on the site of a former brickworks and was the original Sydney Parkrun, the weather was wall to wall sunshine and the temperature 16 Celsius…. Perfect conditions.  The event was well marshalled and they had even gone to the trouble of writing messages on the path in chalk, the messages were a mixture of useful information like Keep left and route markers and then after about 2.5KM we reached a hill, the message in chalk said “welcome to our hill” it was as the hill got steeper the next message said “Keep going you are doing really well” a little further of “as Bon Jovi said “your half way there”  and then “enjoy your parkrun” “you’re at the top it’s downhill now.” Incidentally the view from the top was spectacular with the Sydney skyline in front of us, at the bottom of the hill the run went through a wooded area and the bird song was totally different that that heard in the UK. Finally, after the second lap It was a right turn to the finish funnel where I was 109^th in a time of 26:50. As a running experience it was right up there as one of the best, if not the best, I have ever had. I had a huge buzz that I still have now twelve hours later a flight to Singapore.

One of the madder weeks in my life

This week was a bit of an epic traveling week. For a while I have had a client in Australia and we have recently been talking about expanding the relationship. At fairly short notice they invited me down for a working visit. Happily, they were paying for the ticket, sadly they booked economy class. On Monday morning I found myself at Heathrow ready to take, what I expect will the longest flight of my life, the QF10 direct from Heathrow to Perth and 16:18 minutes after taking off from I landed in Australia. I could write an entire piece about how nuts a direct UK Australia flight is but the reality is if you are going to fly 13 hours to Singapore you might as well fly sixteen to Perth. The flight was great and aside from the two meal services they don’t bring anything round as they want you to get up and come to the galley for food just to avoid the DVT.

I only had one full day in Perth which was designed to allow me to spend some time at the Airport observing the operations. The Western Australian economy is dominated by the mining industry and Perth Airport is the hub on the operation. The mines wok on a “FIFO” (fly in, fly out) basis with staff working “X” weeks on and “X” weeks off I would guess that over half the passengers that pass through Perth Airport are traveling to a mining site. The airport is full of people wearing Hi visibility gear and working boots. The mines are generally about two hours flying away and have fantastic names like Christmas Creek mine and Tropicana.

I don’t normally get jetlag but on this occasion, I got a case of “second night syndrome” this is where you sleep well on the first night through exhaustion but can’t sleep on the second night. As a result of this I finally got to sleep at 2AM and had to get up at 4AM. With the observation done I spent part of Wednesday flying to Sydney a further three hours and 23 minutes away for a planning workshop on the Friday.

The third night I managed to sleep reasonably well and following the successful conclusion of the workshop on Friday I was free to what I wanted.

Having not slept well, sleep is a theme this week, I was up at 6AM to get to the St Peters Parkrun in Sydney …. More in the next posting. With the parkrun complete by 9AM it was back to the hotel, shower and off to the airport to catch Qantas flight 1 to London via Singapore. The first leg was 7:50 followed by a 1:30 layover in Singapore and then a 12:55 flight back to London where I arrived on Sunday morning seven days after I left home and having flown a mammoth 22,000 KM and 40hours 31 minutes.