SE Asia IV - Grand Prix Bartering

My bargaining skills had a great deal of practice at the A1GP in Sepang. A1GP is similar to Formula 1, the main difference is that the teams represent nations, the slogan is the 'World Cup of Motorsport'. The Sepang circuit is 75km from KL, next to the airport, though this doesn't mean it is easy to get to.

The first day I to went was practice. It was free to get in and one man and his dog showed up to watch. I got the train to Nilai, which took an hour, I then planned to catch a bus to the circuit as the Sepang website told me. Unfortunately there were no buses running to the circuit so I caught the bus to the airport, this took another hour. When I arrived I asked for the bus to the circuit and was told that no buses were running and I would have to catch a taxi. The taxi cost me RM38 (about 5 pounds) not an arm and a leg but the previous two hours of travel had cost me RM6. On the way back I stood at the side of the motorway with another spectator and attempted to flag down coaches bound for KL. We stood there for an hour unable to get a coach to stop. A plethora of taxis did attempt to come to our aid. It doesn't matter where you are in Malaysia, you can be minding your own business strolling down a street, when you will hear the light toot of a horn announcing that a taxi is ready and raring to take you wherever you may wish. Whilst waiting at the side of the motorway we negotiated with several drivers. They would propose outlandish charges of RM70 and we would counter with RM10. Eventually we found a driver who we haggled down to RM15. We got to the airport and then jumped on a coach to KL, it only cost RM10.


The next day was qualifying. I caught a coach to the airport and then managed to persuade the airport bus driver to go via the circuit (this was after I refused to get off the bus until I was taken there). When I left the circuit the extra spectators for qualifying had prompted taxis to pull up outside the entrance. "You want taxi sir?", "How much to the airport?", "50 Ringgits", ""I paid 15 yesterday", "No, no sir 40 Ringgits". I had this conversation with a number of drivers and carried on walking to the motorway. I was met with the toots of horns from taxis. They would offer me a price, and my new tactic became shutting the door on them after a bid I didn't like. A couple of drivers pulled up and after I rejected them they reversed along the hard shoulder to the previous turnoff. I was beginning to wonder whether my confidence in getting a low price was misplaced when a taxi pulled up and offered me the fare of RM10, I didn't bother haggling.

On race day I managed to get the airport coach to drop me off at the circuit. There was a decent turnout of spectators, probably around 5,000 people. At the end of the day I wandered out of the circuit and found drivers who weren't interested in taking me to the airport, they wanted the big fares to KL. I continued my stroll toward the motorway when a driver pulled up next to me and offered me RM40 to the airport, I said no 10, and shut the door. He opened the door and offered 30, I said no and shut the door. He opened the door and offered 20, I said no and I would accept 15. He said no so I walked off. I could hear him yelling in the background and then he pulled up next to me, "Jump in sir, I take you airport for 15 Ringgits". I should have gone lower.



I would recommend visiting Sepang for a race. It is a beautiful circuit, very modern, with great views of the track. It also gives you a crash course in bartering.

SE Asia III - KL

Kuala Lumpur is a cross between Singapore and Melaka. It has the infrastructure of Singapore but is slightly mental. For instance, they have traffic lights but they are rarely obeyed. I was in Medaka square crossing the road at a set of lights, the green man started walking (he is animated in Malaysia) and the countdown clock started. I crossed only to have a motorcycle flash passed infront of me, a car carried on behind me and another car had to do an emergency stop next to me (talk about skid marks). I try to follow the policy of crossing when a local does and putting them between me and the oncoming traffic.

KL is a raw version of Singapore. The Petronas Towers are more dazzling than anything Singapore has to offer. Yet there are so many litter strewn alleys that you pass. There are whole streets of ruined buildings. The most disturbing scene I've yet seen on my travels was a man lying in the gutter outside the Times Square Mall. He was spread eagled on the floor with an open wound on his leg. There was a steady stream of people passing him on both sides of the packed pavement. I'm not suggesting that Malaysians are any less caring than other nations, I'm sure such a scene could be witnessed in London, Paris or New York. It just seems that the gap between rich and poor is greater here and more distinct.

There is quite a bit to see in KL. The Petronas Towers are a must. The visit up to sky bridge is free (you just have to queue up in the morning for a ticket). It isn't the most exciting. partly due to Petronas using it as an opportunity for a company presentation, and partly due to you not being able to see the Petronas Towers. The view from the KL Tower is better, because you are higher up and you get to see the Petronas Towers. Merdeka square is pretty, and it is a good time to visit as Malaysia is celebrating its 50th year of independence, so there are plenty of flags. The Batu Caves are spectacular. They are Hindu temples outside of KL. It takes just over half an hour to get there by bus. When you get there you have to climb over 250 steps to get to the main temple. The main temple is full of monkeys. These monkeys are trained in the art of stealing food from tourists and intimidating small children. The drive on the bus is worth the trip in itself. In KL the bus conductors hawk for business. They hang out the side of the bus as you are driving along yelling out their destinations to anyone walking along the pavement. It gets even more intense at proper bus stops where they compete against one another for business.

I haven't faced a great deal of hawking since arriving in South East Asia, apart from the restaurateurs in Boat Quay Singapore. In China Town KL there is a giant street market. It is hot sweaty and claustrophobic. It is a hawkers paradise. They did their best to tempt me into their stall and at times would grab me by the arm. I met all attempts with a smile and shake of the head. I find that the best way to deal with hawkers is to smile and say no thankyou. It doesn't require you getting angry or frustrated. However, Bukit Bintang can try anyone's patience. It is a popular street in the Golden Triangle, close to where I was staying. During the day it is busy. In the evening it gets busier and the massage shops open. They have hawkers sitting on the street outside their establishments. When you walk passed they jump out at you with laminated picture cards of the work they offer. I tried to meet all advances with a smile and polite no thankyou. It does get frustrating when you are trying to get somewhere and they keep jumping out at you, especially when you have already rejected 5 and the hawker can see this but still believes that they will somehow persuade you.

I stayed at Pondok Lodge in KL. It is in the Golden Triangle just off of Bukit Bintang and within walking distance of the Petronas Towers. I had a bed for RM25.00 which included breakfast. Breakfast was not your typical hostel affair where blood thirsty backpackers compete to grab what they can. At Pondok Lodge they had a guy serve you, admittedly it was just 2 pieces of toast, a banana, a piece of fruit loaf and a cup of tea, but it was still nice. I ended up in twin room with a Pakistani guy who had been living there for a few months. The room was fine apart from the air conditioning being shared between two rooms. There was a hole in the wall between the two rooms and the air conditioning was cunningly placed in the middle. The controls were in the other room and we had the remote in our room. This meant that during the night there was a fight between both parties to keep it on or to keep it off. Pondok Lodge is above a number of bars, so it can be a bit noisy but I never found it a problem. They also have a rooftop terrace which is a great place to escape the hustle and bustle of KL and hopefully grab a breeze to stop sweating for 5 minutes.

Defining who a local is in KL and Malaysia isn't quite straight forward. There are 4 distinct groups of locals. There are the Orangi Asli the native people who live in tribes (more to come on them in the Cameron Highlands). There are the Malays, the Chinese and the Tamil Indians. The Malays are Muslim. I like all the colourful headscarfs. I can't remember which politician said that they found headscarfs 'confronting' but it struck me as a daft comment at the time and after is even more ridiculous when you travel in Malaysia. You are constantly greeted by smiling headscarf clad faces. The Chinese have lived in Malaysia prior to European involvement in the region. They moved to the Malay peninsula as traders. The Indians have a similar history, however, the greater part of the Tamil Indians were brought in by the British either as slaves or as workers. The deal struck between the groups when Malaysia gained independence from Britain was that the Malays would have political power, the Chinese would continue to hold the economic power and the Indians were left to fill in the gaps. On the surface this form of multi-culturalism seems to work. However, the 3 groups maintain separate lives. They work together but they do not live together. In my time in Malaysia even the 3 races working together is somewhat unusual. Shops and restaurants are generally staffed by one race. The people who agitate most against the status-quo are the Tamil Indian community because they get the roughest deal out of all three. While I was at the A1GP in Sepang there was a big demonstration in KL at the Petronas Towers. Click here for a link to a BBC News article about the Indian Demonstration. The Malay constitution states that only a Muslim can be head of the government. There is also defacto discrimination with Malays being entitled to open shops in certain areas where Indians and Chinese cannot. In a recent law regarding foreign firms starting businesses in Malaysia the law stated that the foreign firm must employ at least one Malay (not one Malay, Chinese, or Indian). This is all the more interesting after you have visited the National Museum in KL. It has a special section on Merdeka, celebrating 50 years of independence from Britain (hence all the Malaysian flags in my photos). There is a video presentation when an old Malay man tells his grandson (Malay) and his two friends (a Chinese girl and an Indian boy) about the struggle for independence. He says how the three races now live side by side, equally, in a free democracy.

SE Asia II - You say Malacca I say Melaka

Melaka is the first major stop on the West Coast of the Malay Peninsula. It is famous (or infamous) for its colonial heritage. The Portugese got here in 1511, the Dutch kicked the Portugese out in 1641, the British moved the Dutch on in 1795 and the locals got rid of the British in 1957. The locals seem quite proud of this history, or at least the marketing people do. In Bahasa (the Malaysian language) it is spelt Malacca in English it is spelt Melaka.

Melaka is a town of two halves. There is the new part of town with a couple of snazzy new malls and big open spaces. It felt akin to an Eastern European town square. The old town on the other hand has some colonial buildings, a Little India and a Chinatown. (I wonder why they aren't called Little China and India Town?). I liked Chinatown in Singapore because it was big and full of Chinese people. Chinatown in Melaka is even better because it still retains a historic quality. There are old temples dotted amongst the winding streets. The old town is great. It is a maze of narrow windy streets. The traffic through these streets is amazing, cars rush by with motorbikes weaving in between them. There is no footpath, so you try and doge oncoming traffic whilst avoiding falling into the open drains. I was surprised to see the cars had so few dents in them.

My first taste of public Malaysian public transport was the bus from the Coach station to the town centre. The array of buses outside the Coach terminal all looked like they needed a complete overhaul. The driver on mine seemed more concerned with playing with the buttons on the dashboard than paying attention to where he was going. The bus seemed to be in a constant state of motion, even when people were getting on and off, which was amazing considering the amount of traffic surrounding the bus.

I stayed at Shirah's Guesthouse. A bed in a 6 person dorm cost 1.80 pounds. It was only me and an Italian guy who greeted me (and Shirah) by walking down the corridor naked. Generally first impressions aren't the best when the other party isn't wearing any clothes, it makes you wonder what else they consider acceptable behaviour. Nothing dodgy transpired at Shirah's, though there was an unpleasant odour coming from something in the room (possibly the naked Italian). The place was clean and tidy. The shower was cold, but I think that is standard in this part of the world. I was lucky to have a proper shower head, apparently there is normally just a hose connected to the water pipes of the toilet. They also had the luxury of western style toilets, no crouching hidden toilet paper.

I had my customary breakfast of Roti. Roti is an Indian dish, which is a kind of pancake but not quite. Even though it is the morning the Indians will eat Roti with curry sauce and some form of curried meat. They serve both of these in separate dishes to the Roti so you don't have to eat them. Roti is served in a variety of forms. I have had them with chocolate, banana and egg. In all these forms curry sauce and curried meat is supplied.

SE Asia I - Singapore Smile

Singapore is the friendliest city I have visited on my travels. It is big, busy and full of people yet still manages to maintain a relaxed atmosphere. It is a melting pot of Chinese, Malays and Indians. I expected to see alot more Western faces than I did. Singapore is addicted to shopping. The shops are busy all day and well into the night. They also love food and you can understand why when it is excellent and it is as cheap as chips, a main meal will set you back just 2 pounds. The streets are busy into the night and feel safe throughout. I wandered the streets at all hours and had no problems,they don't even have the Western problem of drunks spilling on to the streets in the late hours (I think the expats jump/fall into taxis).

I was told by many people that Singapore was a sterile place with little atmosphere and no character. I found Singapore friendly because of the people I encountered and the atmosphere in the streets. It is safe and it is generally clean but that doesn't make it sterile. If you want things to be a bit crazy you can visit Little India, which is even more packed and crowded than the rest of the city. Singapore is heavily Westernised, but I thought that was a great quality. It is Asia's take on an ultra modern city and they have managed to do a better job than most.

I had to visit Raffles while I was in Singapore. It is very much out of the Empire and it is a great set of buildings to wander around. I had a Singapore Sling cocktail in the Long Bar and was a little disappointed, it doesn't have the greatest air to it and is just a general tourist spot. I also went to Sentosa Island. It is a tourist resort for the locals and can be reached in a variety of ways. The best one is to jump on the cable car from Harbour Front and be whisked over the harbour on to the island. It is so good infact, that at night couples have candlelight dinners in the cable cars. It could well be very romantic but each time you reach the other end people stare at you as the car doors open and you swing passed eating dinner. Sentosa is a great place to watch the sunset, with beautiful man made beaches and a view of the city skyline.

Changi airport is by far the best airport I have been through. It feels big and open. It is also easy to get around. Once you go through immigration you walk straight through to the baggage carousels and then out through customs to the waiting taxis. There isn't a maze of confusing corridors to negotiate. There are also free internet terminals as you walk to immigration. Immigration was the friendliest I have came across, they didn't question you within an inch of your life and they even had complimentary mints. They weren't the cheap fifty different types of urine mints, but the individually packaged ones.

I flew to Singapore from Perth with Qantas. I've flown with Qantas domestically in Australia and internationally. In general I find their stewardesses snotty. They seem to have the attitude of how dare you sit on my plane. On the flight into Singapore they were much better than normal (possibly to do with the average being below the Qantas norm in the mid-twenties). I also discovered that flying on the small planes in and out of the mine sites in Western Australia means you appreciate the comforts of the modern planes even more. I couldn't believe how smooth the takeoff and how much room there was on board (nor how big the wing looked).

I stayed at the New 7th Storey Hotel near Bugis Junction. It is far from new and it isn't 7 storeys high (it is actually 9). It is, however, great budget accommodation. The dorm rooms only have 3 or 4 beds in them. They change the sheets everyday and give you a new toothbrush and a new bar of soap everyday. There is a TV in the room and air-conditioning. I was as ever pleasantly surprised by the people I met during my stay. I met Harry a German who was on his way to Australia. I spent a very entertaining afternoon with him shopping on Orchard Road (a Singaporean institution). He bartered with the shop owners and they gave him very funny banter back. I also met Annette from Australia who introduced me to her Singaporean friends and the delights of fish head soup. On the subject of fish head's they are a Singaporean delicacy and apparently when served a fish head you eat all of it. Another culinary delight is Pig Organ Soup, which is full of pig organ's including the intestines. I also had an unlikely dorm mate in an Orthodox Jew who was extremely shy and even more uncomfortable in his surroundings.

I was lucky enough to be able to move into a friend of the family's place in Singapore. Andrew (from Perth) put me up at his place in the Twin Regency Condos. I spent a very leisurely week at his place enjoying the 40 metre swimming pool and the close connections to town. The Singapore MRT is the best train system I have come across in a city. It is modern, clean, very cheap, and gets you where you want to go. The only complaint I have is with the locals who seem unable to fathom letting people get off the train before getting on the train. I don't know if I am looking back on the London Underground with rose tinted spectacles but I am pretty sure people would let you off before attempting to get on. Andrew also showed me Orchard Towers and Four Floors which is a great place to people watch, even if the people in question may not be of the highest repute.

Auckland and Vancouver Tourist Guides

I have had a couple of my photo's published on an online tourist guide for Auckland and Vancouver, follow the links below to have a look:



Auckland



Vancouver

Oz XXX - And that is that. The end.

I like the quote even if it isn't entirely accurate. My time in the land down under has come to a close and my next stop is South East Asia. I had a superb time in Australia. I thoroughly enjoyed working in Sydney, 1770, and the Goldfields. The highlight of the year would be the 3 months working on the mines in WA, simply because it was a unique Australian experience. I was very lucky to have so many connections in Perth. I would not have been able to get my mines job otherwise, and it also meant I was given a roof over my head by Nadene and Andrew, Richard and Sandy, and Jon and Alexia. Not only did this mean that I got to save more money, but I also got to meet locals and see Perth from their perspective.

I managed to get to enjoy a big event on the Australian calendar before leaving, the Melbourne Cup. I wasn't actually in Melbourne for the Melbourne Cup but it is celebrated across the country with other horse racing events. So I made my way to Ascot Races with a mate from the mine site Alan. It was a true Australian day of drinking and gambling. Alan and I made an effort and wore a shirt and tie and about half of the guys there did, whilst the other half (the Bogans) were in board shorts and wife beater tops. All of the women took the opportunity to be glamorous with dresses and hats. ALthough these dresses were of varying degrees of taste and decency. The drinking started early at 11am and by midday a number of people seemed to be the worse for wear under the sun. By the afternoon taste and decency dropped as people stumbled around. There is something quintessentially Australian about gambling and drinking. It is a key part of any Australian celebration, none more so than Anzac day, the true Australia day. The equivalent of Remembrance Sunday, it takes place in April commemorating the Gallipoli landings, while there are dawn services across the country, by late morning the drinking begins and the 2-up gambling starts.

One of the great aspects of working on the mines in the outback were the characters that you would meet. My supervisor had been working on mines across Western Australia for years. He told one story where he was on his own in the Pilbarra sleeping on a camp bed in a swag (the Geo had left to leave him with tidying up to do). They had heard dingo howls in the distance but had thought nothing of it. During this particular night he woke up to find dingo's sniffing his neck and trying to open his swag with their paws. He said it was the longest half an hour of his life waiting for them to either attack him or get bored and leave. This guy had also managed to accrue huge gambling debts which meant he had to become a male stripper to pay them off. One job that paid particularly well was to be a human table where people would pay for the privilege of eating food off of you. A driller's offsider on one of the rigs was nicknamed Clivey (substitute rude word here) because whenever the driller told him to do something he would refer to an imaginary character named Clivey who was telling him what to do. He was another guy who had love and hate tattooed on his knuckles. It is no wonder that the drillers go slightly mad. Alot of them do month long stints and back at the beginning of November they were considering doing double stints, to take them up until Christmas and give themselves an extra week off. I would not want to leave the impression that all of the people on the mine sites were the salt of the earth. There were some people who were ridiculously lazy. We had a supervisor who would not come out to the core yard to do any work. He would just hide in the office all day and on a number of occasions he was caught in the mess watching TV. In the evening during dinner he would ask what you had been doing all day, rather than actually having a look himself. The trouble is he won't get the sack because the guy above him is even more lazy.

There are a number of things that I will miss from Australia. The good weather for starters. Although I won't miss bad weather when Australians would ask whether it reminded me of home. For the record it doesn't. Australians do seem to live in some sense of denial about rain. They tell you that it never rains and that they are experiencing one of the worst droughts on record, yet it does rain. When it does rain Australians refuse to wear raincoats. They wander around getting soaked, "It doesn't rain in Oz". I will miss the attitude of "No worries", "too easy", "it'll be right". I will miss the beaches and the wide open spaces. I won't miss the various assortments of wildlife that can kill you. I finally got to see a Redback in Perth, it looks like any other small spider. I may have even been bitten by something of the eight-legged variety as my forearm swelled up due to being bitten by something. In saying that you rarely see snakes and spiders around. The biggest spiders I saw were when I lived in Sydney, where there was a Huntsmen bigger than my hand in my house. The biggest snake I saw was in Byron Bay, a 2 metre long Python making its merry way along the grass behind the beach. I won't miss the hypochondriac response to the terrorist threat. I consider it highly unlikely that a terrorist would consider blowing anything up outside of Sydney or Canberra (even in these two cities I think its highly unlikely). I can't see Al Qaeda ordering a bus bombing in Tewantin (a tiny town near Noosa), and yet there are posters proclaiming such a fate. I will miss drive through off-licenses (bottleshops) because you never know when you might need a drink and how quickly you might need to get one. By the same token on every boat or ferry trip I have been on in Australia, no matter the size of vessel or duration of trip, there has always been an announcement that the bar was open. I will miss the Australian obsession with cold beer, not to sound too much of a Pomme but drinking a warm beer is not the end of the world. Australians, however, seem unable to contemplate such a fate. If you serve them a warm beer they take it as a slight against them. When we went for BBQs in the Bush on the mine site we would always have an esky full of ice, simply for the beer. I will miss the obsession with sport and the multitude of different sports being played. Aussie Rules may be legalised violence but it is certainly a good spectacle to watch.

OzXXIX - Out of the pan into the old gold mine

I had been working for the past couple of months at the Cosmos mine site for Jubilee Mines. During my last swing on site I was informed that I was moving to their other site, Bannockburn, in an hour and I was to pack my things. This was due to someone senior's nephew being a muppet. He was moved to Cosmos and I was moved to Bannockburn. Needless to say I wasn't pleased being used in such a way. However, it turned out to be a great experience and topped off my time in Australia. The Bannockburn is much more isolated, when we flew in we still had an hour's drive along dirt tracks to get to the site. The great thing about Bannockburn is that it is small. People are generally friendly and you get to know them much quicker. There is more work to do as a Fieldy but it is more varied and you spend a great deal of time driving through the Bush getting to whether you need to go. Backpackers don't come here and Englishmen are rare. There is a great feeling of space.

Bannockburn is an old gold mine abandoned in 1996 and is currently used as a base for Jubilee's Exploration team in the area. At Cosmos there is already an open pit and underground tunnels. Bannockburn will become the Sinclair mine for Jubilee and will begin operations in 12 months. There is currently no infrastructure at Sinclair hence why the Exploration team have to use the old gold mine accommodation. The rooms are old and the beds aren't great. You cannot drink the tap water due to frog's nesting in the supply. The frog's climb out of bathroom drains and toilet bowls. At Cosmos there are about 300 people on site at anyone time, whereas at Bannockburn there are only 40. This means the quality and variety of food is much less (especially as the cooking facilities are pretty poor). The Bannockburn core yard, where I spend most of my days, did not have any shade over the racks due to the core shed being built 200 metres in the wrong direction. Making a mistake with GPS coordinates isn't cheap, they moved the shed at a cost of $20,000. The only toilet facility at the core yard is a hole in the ground with a steel drum on top and a black plastic lid on top of that. The unfortunate thing is that this does not have a roof so under the Australian the black plastic seat gets awfully hot on top of the steel drum.

I still fly to and from site. We fly to a place called Leonora on smaller 18 seater planes. There is one row of seats on either side of the aisle and you have to crouch as you walk down the aisle. There isn't a toilet on board. Before we boarded the flight the pilot and co-pilot stood gave us our inflight food and drink as we waited to board (a cost cutting masure Ryanair may consider introducing). During takeoff and landing the curtain between the cabin and the cockpit is pulled back so you can see out the front and see what the pilot is up to. On my first flight out of Leonora we were informed that the flight was going to be delayed due to a fuel pump problem. I was sitting near the plane and overheard a member of the ground crew say "sometimes the trip switch in the cradle doesn't work, so I kicked it twice and now it's working." I hope this conversation doesn't take place at Heathrow. The pilot had already told us that he didn't fancy gliding into Perth and I wouldn't have liked to hear the request from the pilot for someone to climb out on to the wing and give it a kick.

In general there is a great deal more wildlife around due to there being alot less people. There are more snakes, emus, eagles, kangaroos, and bungarra lizards. There are a number of resident bungarra's who have decided that the core yard provides an excellent source of drinking water and food for them. You will be cutting on one of the saws, turn round, and have a metre long lizard under your feet. At the russbish tip a massive bungarra has taken a very comfortable residence amongst the food scraps. The other day I watched a Kangaroo being chased by an Emu across the road as we drove by, we nearly managed to wipe out an entire Emu family on the roads the following day. One evening we had a BBQ out in the bush at a place called Eagle Rock. On the way back we saw a Kangaroo and a small Joey in the middle of the road. At the sight of us approaching the Joey tried to leap back into mum's pouch but she wasn't having any of it. We pulled up next to Joey and he bleated at us, then decided it was probably best to hop after mum. I unfortunately managed to hit an Emu on my way to the airport as I flew out for the last time.

A member of the wildlife fraternity who I wasn't quite so pleased to see more of were the flies. The number of flies was quite incredible. As soon as the sun was up they would swarm all over you. They would fly into every hole on your face. You could swipe away as much as you want, but even if you managed to get one another would soon follow. Someone would be having a covnersation only to start wretching as they swallowed a fly. We resorted to fly nets to preserve our sanity.

While I was there I managed to go to the Leinster Races. Leinster is a town owned by BHP Biliton. The company chooses who lives there and they run all the services. On the outskirts of town is a dirt horse racing track that they use periodically. It was obviously a big event in the Goldfields social calendar as people came from far and wide to drink and gamble. During the races most people stayed next to the bar and waited to hear the results rather than go outside and watch the horses fly passed. After the racing finished it was then followed by a game of 2-up. This involved even greater drinking and even more gambling. We were graced with the presence of the World Champion of 2-up.