For the umpteenth time. I’m looking forward to yet another month of that broad, smiling beach. I think this is my 5th visit in the past 8 years.  For another blog about the area, see www.sprangleblog.com.

Home exchanges really work. Sometimes. Then again, sometimes they don’t. But that’s for later.

Right now, two weeks before Christmas, 2009, I’m on a Continental flight from Newark to Los Angeles, some 35,000 feet above FlyoverLand, USA, skimming across the  rumpled white quilt of clouds that are hiding a raging midwestern blizzard. I’ve got a Bach Orchestral Suite on the headphones to charm away the boredom. I’ve had the “meal” (don’t ask) and seen the movie that started shortly after we took off. “High Society” (Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Louie Armstrong, Grace Kelly and Celeste Holm – more on that later.)

click to enlarge – view from QueensCliff

I’m heading for a condo in QueensCliff, above the north end of Manly Beach, Australia, one of my favorite destinations in the world.  The area is home to my son John (www.harkinsmusic.com) and his two sons. That’s 3-year-old Reily appearing in the banner that occasionally pops up at the top of these pages.

Before I left home, one of the clients of my Internet business asked, “What did you tell your home exchange partner about Jersey City that she was willing to swap her place above that beach for your little studio in Jersey City?”

I explained to him that it was a purely market-driven transaction. I apparently was the only one in the online home exchange system to offer a one-month home exchange, reasonably close to Times Square, in exchange for a place reasonably close to Manly Beach. As Sammy Davis once explained the reason for his success, “Most of it is simply showing up for the gig.”

one of many beautiful sights in Manly

So, although it will take a little more than 28 hours to get to Oz, I’m showing up. Aside from grandchildren. Manly has many other attractions, such as the one to the left. Click to enlarge.

It’s a ordeal for anyone. At 76 years old, it’s even tougher.

Leave home 2 hours before flight time for the 15 minute ride to Newark Aiport, 6-plus hours flight from EWR to LAX, 4-plus hours layover in LA before the 16-plus hours agony across the faceless Pacific Ocean allegedly down there in the dark,  to SYD. Do the math. Greater love hath no man for his grandsons who live in Australia.

With the “help” of Virgin Australia Airlines, the normally 28 hour trip became 52 hours of frustration, lousy service and corporate arrogance. That’s the next entry below.

Well, as I was saying, sometimes they work. I’ve great experiences with them. Met some wonderful people with whom I swapped. Until this experience, the folks I’ve exchanged with in the Manly area have been smart, successful, interesting people. Even though we have not done an exchange since the initial ones with two couples from Balgowah Heights, it has been a great pleasure, during subsequent visits, to share dinner and nights out on the town with Betty and Jim, as well as Helen and Tony.

And then there was this year’s trip, the “Swap From Hell.”

It was a last minute thing. I had I started the exchange partner search too late in the season. Most people who wanted to visit New York City for Christmas and New Years had made their plans almost a year in advance.

Starting in September, I began writing to every possible partner hoping for a response. The answers were prompt, polite and discouraging. My own advertisement was not generating any contacts. I started pricing “rooms for rent” and “surfer hotels.” Even they were not available, despite the high prices.

I could see I might have to change my plans. No Manly this year.

But the day after Thanksgiving, just as I was planning on changing the schedule, I got an email from a woman at the north end of Manly Beach. An incredible location, just a short walk to the sand. A bus that stopped at the corner connected to everything in the area, including Warringah Mall and the other Northern Beaches.

She was offering a two-year-old, 3 bedroom condo with a balcony and garden facing the beach, swimming pool, high-speed internet, large screen TV, modern kitchen. The photo of the building was delicious.

Her email said, “I have always had a fantasy of Christmas in Manhattan, wandering the great stores like Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s, watching the ice-skating in Rockefeller Center and then seeing the ball drop in Times Square on New Years Eve. I hope I am not too late. Is your apartment still available?”

I was online when that email arrived. I responded within seconds, “Yes is it is. Can you arrive here on December 10th so I can get you settled in before I catch my flight to Manly on December 12th?”

“Yes, yes.” she replied. Molly Bloom, I thought, as I booked and paid for my high-priced, late-booking. She said she was in her late 50s, long divorced. I never fully understood if she had just one son, or more.

Then, step by step, one email at a time, it unraveled.

After a few days silence she wrote, “I can’t get a flight that soon. In fact, I don’t see how I can come after all. But don’t worry. You still can have my apartment and I’ll go visit friends up in Queensland for the month.”

She explained that she would leave the day before I was due but would give the key to my son John, who lives not far away.

OK, it was going to happen.

My arrival was delayed by the fiasco with the flight from LAX to SYD (see “How I lost My Virginity“ further along in this narrative). John met my 8am arriving flight at SYD and drove me to QC.

As he drove he told me he had picked up the key but added, “You are going to have a problem. She not going to visit her friends. She says the apartment is big enough that you can stay. Today, she’s gone off to a wedding and will stay three days. But she’s coming back. And she’s wacko. I think she’s crazy or sick or both.”

I soon found out John was right. She came back that very same day without warning. Just walked in. She said she was horribly depressed and unable to stay with her friends. She looked like every bit of that was true. She was a physical mess. “But don’t worry, I’ll be in my room almost all the time.”

The phone and the Internet connection had been disconnected, apparently for lack of payment.

But the vibes from her were worse. I got the clear and disturbing impression that she was hoping for something to happen between us. She wasn’t flirtatious.  I doubt, in her current condition, that she was capable of honest, deliberate flirting.

I have heard professionals describe her behavior as “a flat affect”, meaning no personality. No eye contact. Whenever she spoke I had to ask her to raise her voice even though I was only a few feet away.

That obvious lack of basic social skills alone was worrisome. Even more bothersome, she wandered around in diaphanous pajamas and came too close, face to face, when were together in the otherwise spacious kitchen. There was no “personal space.”

After I went to bed she knocked on my (locked) bedroom door “to talk.”

She spoke in a monotone and her words were of desperate depression and loneliness.  She said that medications didn’t help. Could not sleep unless knocked out with pills.

I was silently sympathetic. I’d been in that condition maybe 30 years ago in reaction to a foolish love affair that ended badly. I had been in constant lower-back and leg pain and starting to think of relief by doing something stupid and self-destructive.

I had withdrawn from friends, stopped working, holed up in an north-facing apartment that never saw a single ray of direct sunshine, stuck in the stupor of a cycle of self-medication with a daily bottle of wine, huge doses of aspirin, Valium and bowls of marijuana.

I was saved only by a a staged intervention by friends, along with a shrink they brought with them. He provided savvy psychological counseling, followed by two years of weekly shrink sessions. I’ve been lucky that the depression never returned.

I knew that she was in  trouble and would be trouble for me if I got involved in any way.  I said that, since we were going to be in the same place for a while, i should tell her about myself. I explained my personal situation to her, carefully and gently, emphasizing that I was planning on marrying Margarita, a woman I had known for years, as soon as she and I worked out the practical issues of where we would live, how she would move her career to my city, etc.

Her response to that information confirmed to me there was fantasy stuff going on there with her. She told me she wanted me to leave, as soon as possible, even that very afternoon.

I responded that under the circumstances, I probably should move out. But,  I continued, I estimated that such a move was going to cost me a minimum of $300 per day for a comparable hotel room in the area and the added expense of paying for restaurant meals above making my own in her kitchen. I concluded by telling her I considered her responsible for those expenses because I had come here on the clear understanding that I had the right to be here and those expenses caused by her unilateral decision would have to paid before before I would move.

That was a cold bucket of water for her. It penetrated her fog, She retreated to her bedroom for a few hours and then said she would contact her doctor and sign herself into a clinic for the time I was here. Apparently Australian public health care is generous.

She moved out the next morning and I finally had the place to myself for the remainder of the month.

The image itself is real. On the day I traveled, it appeared every few seconds on the many monitors hanging all around the Virgin Australia public areas at LAX. I took this photo there.

It was the constant lie I had to endure as I was abandoned by them on a cold, rainy night; the night I lost my “Virginity” at LAX.

The oh-so-charming, creative Sir Richard Branson has founded many Virgins. There’s music publishing company Virgin Records, followed by Virgin Music Stores, Virgin Cola, Virgin Blue, Virgin Airlines and Virgin America Airlines. This past November he began offering  Virgin Australia or, as their printed materials and signs usually have it, Vaustralia. Whilst some of his Virgins have enjoyed great success, a significant number of them have failed.

It is implicit that when a virgin fails, someone gets fucked.

It may have been an overlooked clue that the new airline’s logo offers the V in Vaustralia in the form of a Scarlet Letter.

Oh, had I but paid closer attention.

The reasons for the abysmal failure rate of Virgin This and Virgin That, became clear recently, when I bought – and paid dearly – for their public relations hype. The slogan currently displayed prominently at the LAX check-in counter particularly galls me. It says,“No  Passengers; Just Guests.”

I would have settled for being a passenger on the flight I paid for and arrived at LAX check-in with plenty of time for me to walk from there to the plane door. As it happened, I was not a guest that night on Virgin. I was not even a passenger.

I was a paying customer in a ratty nearby hotel, at my own trouble and expense.

The problem is that, unknown to me, and many people, Virgin has a policy not found in the rules of any other major carrier.  Check-in is closed 60 minutes prior to flight time. If you show up with only 59 minutes remaining, you will be turned away.

It doesn’t matter if you have a confirmed ticket and an assigned seat, or if you were delayed en route on a connecting flight, both of which were my situation that night. It does not matter that you are 77 years old and in light-weight clothing while one of the coldest, fiercest rainstorms to ever hit the area is flexing the large glass windows. You will be denied a boarding pass.

There were still 45 minutes left when I stepped up to the counter. I later learned that due to that bad storm outside, the plane actually didn’t leave for more than another 1/2-hour beyond it’s scheduled time. So, in reality, I had an hour an a quarter to walk a few hundred yards to the gate where they had not even started boarding the other passengers.

What help can you look for from their counter people? None. Worse than that, they are downright rude and abusive.  After quoting the 60-minute  rule to me, they simply turned away and walked though the door to the back room, never to return.

My requests for help finding a hotel room, or to send a message to the people who would be waiting for my arrival in Australia were ignored.

With that, you are fucked because the way that terminal is laid out, you are in an area that is open only as long as their counter is open.

Standing in the Vaustralia checkin area, you are not actually inside the terminal, past security, where there are lounge areas, shops, rest rooms, phones, hotel room desks  and places to eat.  You may enter only if you have a boarding pass – which they have just denied you. You must leave the building and cannot return until the next day.

That’s how I lost my “virginity.”

UPDATE Mid-March 2010: Virgin America, sister company of Virgin Australia, just put a plane full of people, including elderly and women and children through a 16-hour ordeal on the ground.  That’s yet another meaning of the promise threat,  “No  Passengers; Just Guests.”

Among the many reports of how those prisoners guests were treated by the crew, is the published quote allegedly spoken by a crew member to a starving woman who was begging for one of the cookies that were rationed out, “Sit down and shut up.”

UPDATE Early December 2010: See how they screwed a first class passenger and his wife.  http://silentbobspeaks.com/?p=398

By then it was dark. The wind blowing across the unsheltered elevated pedestrian ramp between buildings was fierce.  I was in shirt-sleeves, having not expected to be exposed to these elements. I mean, for god’s sake, I was just changing planes.  I later learned that the storm has closed down highways in the area.

Just to make sure that you understand the full measure of this abuse, let’s make sure it is on the record that I am now 77 years old. While I am in much better health and condition than some people half my age, no one would mistake me for anything but a fat old guy.  But my pleas for help in getting a taxi or a hotel or to make a phone call were ignored. The counter staff simply turned away.

Need I make a special plea that this is not how you treat someone old enough to be your grandfather?

So, I dragged myself and my luggage through the storm, the half mile to the next open building. No thanks to VAustralia, and only by a stroke of badly needed good luck, it was the Tom Bradley Terminal. That building is somewhat “old-fashioned” in that the lobby and all its public areas such as restaurants, bars, toilets and so on, are completely open to the public. The joke that passes for “security” is deep in the back, closer to the gates.

The restaurant on the balcony level, immediately at the top of the escalator, has free Open Wifi.  I was able get on my laptop and with the advice of a helpful waitress, identify a nearby low-rent hotel and book a room for the night. When she heard me say that the site’s booking did not offer any method of arranging a shuttle ride, she kindly lent me her cellphone so I could call the hotel and get that squared away.

HINT TO SIR BRANSON: that caring waitress would do a lot more for your public image than all the automatons who hide behind the slammed door of your check-in desk. I was really pleased to give her a tip that was many times her hourly income, so large that she tried to refuse it until I seriously insisted.

The hotel confirmed on the phone that my booking included a free pickup and return in their airport shuttle. They said it would be out in front of the building in 15 minutes. I was outside in fewer than 5 minutes.

30 minutes passed. Still raining; still blowing. By now it was even colder. I’m still wet, still in short sleeves and still too old to take much of this.

At 45 minutes, I borrowed a  cell phone from someone else huddled against the building and called the hotel.

“Sir, the last shuttle of the night was an hour ago.  You’ll have to take a taxi. we are only 7 minutes. ”

“Well, I expect you to pay for that. I booked on the basis of the free airport pickup and then you confirmed it. ”

After some grumbling between him and someone else near him, he came back and agreed to pay for it.

The ride was actually only five minutes, and perhaps less than a mile. But the fare was $19.50. Local rule says that a $15 dollar surcharge is added to the meter on all taxi fares from the airport to local hotels. Pretty cute scam, huh?

I got a receipt (did not leave a tip – enough is enough) and stepped into the Blade-Runner lobby of Motel 6.  Glaring flourescent overhead lights. Pimps sitting on plastic couches watching a Kung-Fu movie. The elevator is lined with diamond-pattern, chrome-plated steel, like the bumpers of a trans-continental 18-wheeler.  Must make it easy to wipe off various stray body-fluids. $57.44 a night, including tax.

The hallway was a long sterile corridor, equally bright and glaring. Plastic tile floor-covering. Metal doors.

I scuttled into the room, secured all the chains and locks, and then dragged a plastic chair to prop under the door knob. The bed appeared to be clean and the bathroom likewise. (post-visit report – no evidence of bedbugs but damn, I was nervous all the time). A long hot shower stopped my shivering and left me relaxed enough to get to sleep. (to the hotel’s credit, despite the glitzy tackiness of it, they too had free open WiFi.)

The next morning was Sunday.  The storm had passed. My flight out would not leave until early evening.  The hotel did not have a restaurant.  I walked along the sometimes sidewalk, sometimes muddy path for about 15 minutes, until I came to a pancake house.

From the street boxes outside I loaded up with local newspapers. I ordered the Big Boy-Hungry-Overweight-Greedy Man Special. It was at least two hours and 6 coffee refills later that I staggered back to the hotel and negotiated a n0-extra-charge late checkout.  My nap was interrupted by the frequent demands of the coffee to be left behind.

Maybe because it was Sunday, the same scum who had given me so much grief the night before were not at the Virgin desk when I checked in three fucking hours early.  I could have checked in hours earlier but Virgin does not open its checkin until that time – and even then, they were 15 minutes late in doing that.

The short version is , the people (and maybe just a specific woman who asumes various identities) who run seniorsHomeExchange.com, are liars and thieves. In this litigious world, one does not publish such bold accusations without rock-solid, well-documented basis in truth. Oh, how I would love for them to sue me and put themselves under the jurisdiction of a USA Federal Court.

First, the good news. The cheapskates among you are about to enter No Tipping Paradise. Service staff here (waiters, waitresses, bartenders, taxi drivers, etc.) do not expect tips. Occasionally, you will encounter one who is wise in the ways of American tourists and has seen enough Hollywood movies that they know how to hover and hint their way to a gratuity from the uninformed.

If you run into that, ignore it. The usual credit/debit card signature slip usually does not offer the option of adding a tip. If it is a holiday or weekend, many restaurants add a “holiday premium” of 10%. Resturants may also add a percentage  for parties larger than 6 or 8 persons. But that is not for the service staff; it goes to the business’ bottom line.

The bad news is, service sucks. In a restaurant, no one will come to your table during the meal and ask if everything is OK. They really do not care. In fact, once your dishes are delivered, you probably will need to fire off a cannon to get further attention. And even then . . . ??

Why does this situation exist? This is where the cheapskates get hit from behind. Staff are paid a living wage, generally in the area of $18 to $20 per hour, even in the most humble eatery. Your waitress in AU is possibly better paid than you are. And the cost is built into the price you pay. Menu prices in big cities like Sydney or Melbourne are around 30 to 50% higher than they are in New York, Chicago or Los Angeles.

Some say this is more equitable. Everyone pays. Others point out that the lack of incentive is the cause of indifferent service. Both are right.

A single serving of coffee is small, usually around 3 ounces. The bottomless cup common across America does not exist here. Your cup will NEVER be refilled. If you want more coffee after the initial 3 ounce cup, you must order it and you will pay the same $1 to $1.50 per ounce as the initial cup. In other words, a plain old cup of coffee usually costs somewhere between 3 and 5 bucks.

And you thought Starbucks was expensive.

Directly overhead, the sky is filled with bats. Thousands of bats; bats with 3 foot wing spans; wing spans that challenge anything Bruce Wayne ever dreamed about.

Yes, THOUSANDS OF BATS WITH 3-FOOT WINGSPANS!

Click on the photo to enlarge. Then continue reading the text below the photo.

Their sanctuary in the Royal Botanical Gardens, just beyond the famous sail shaped buildings is the daylight home of the one of the world’s largest colony of these bats.

It is a controversial colony. The bats, also called “Flying Foxes” are reputed to be noisy and smell bad.  There are heated public debates about a common policy in the suburbs of issuing licenses to farmers outside the city to shoot them. I have no opinion on that, but I will say if noisy and smelly is justification for the firing squad, I have had some in-laws who . . . well, you say it, I dasn’t dare.

Every evening, as the daylight fades from the harbor, they take off in large flocks, flap awkwardly to a few hundred feet and head out for roosts as far away as 60 miles. Estimates say there may be as many a 22,000 in this colony.

For more information, click on > “Ku-ring-gai Bat Conservation Society.”

UPDATE July 24, 2011 – the Wall Street Journal just posted a video about these bats. here it is: