Rank Incompetence
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday May 2, 1997
What must visitors think! It's bad enough for a local Centennial Park make-over
How to market manners Another "real thing" Cherry pickings
Going nowhere fast ... that sums up Sydney's problems with providing taxi services. The improvement needed is of Olympic proportions, but can we do a Kieren Perkins?
A READER from Killarney Heights forwards a cutting from The Sunday Sun of Toronto. It's a travel piece by one Jill Rigby who has some very uncomplimentary things to say about our taxis, including a tale of arriving dogtired, to join a line (that's North American parlance for queue) of 200 fuming visitors. She waited an hour and a half and when someone further down the queue heard that she was heading for The Rocks, asked if he could share the cab. The driver, from Iran, told her Sydney's transport was a shambles. Naturally, she quotes him. When she reached her destination, her cab was approached by a group of inebriated men. One kissed the cab window and made obscene gestures. She then ran for her hotel only to find the door bolted. This was Ms Rigby's second visit to the city. She was here seven years ago and remembers that "back then, everything seemed to work in a place commonly acknowledged as one of the most beautiful in the world".
I CAN report at first hand on the scuzzy state of affairs down at The Rocks. Leaving a restaurant on the evening before Anzac Day one saw some ugly sights. Packs of drunken, roistering louts hogging the footpath, puddles of vomit at the kerb. Particularly offensive was the music blaring from the Fortune of War Hotel. Don't we have noise pollution legislation?
CENTENNIAL Park is Sydney's most used (and sometimes most abused) public park. But its management is excellent. Beetled round there this week on the bike and saw much encouraging activity. The major ponds are being drained, restored and replanted and will look marvellous, although right now the mountains of dredged earth give them an uncanny resemblance to Mt Isa. The forecourt of the cafe is also being titched up, another top garden scheme by resident landscape architect Gillian Smart. Now all the management needs to do is train users, particularly at weekends, to respect this splendid amenity.
AN excellent plan of management has been prepared for both this park and adjacent Moore Park, for which the eponymous Trust has responsibility. There is a model of such things and those interested should take a look. It's on public exhibition daily until May 12 at the Centennial Park Administration Building just behind the kiosk.
TUMBLING off the back of a truck this week came a copy of Social and Entertaining Skills, a Handbook, written and copyrighted by Stephen Downes, a sometimes controversial restaurant reviewer from Victoria who is apparently much in demand as a speaker at management seminars. Captains of industry don't like their up-and-coming young execs to let the side down on social occasions, so they call Steve in to drill 'em on good behaviour. His advice makes riveting reading. On table manners, seminarians are instructed to hold the fork in the left hand and the knife in the right, not to take pre-dinner drinks to the table and to leave dropped cutlery or napkins to be picked up by the staff. Moving on to cocktail parties, Downes has constructed a checklist to run through before assaulting the martinis. He advises chaps to dress to the "host's highest expectations" and women to dress "elegantly, simply and nonprovocatively." Other items on the cocktail checklist are "Do I have on the tip of my tongue some conversation starters?" (how about "Excuse me, your fly's undone") and "Do I have an anecdote I could tell?" Just in case you don't, another page of the notes he hands out is a nine-point plan entitled "HOW TO PREPARE AN ANECDOTE". This involves writing down your story, trying it out on family and friends and refining it before you lay it on a client. Rather takes the spontaneity out of a yarn, doesn't it?
OTHER snippets of Downesiana, regarding table manners:
* Don't lick you fingers or wipe them on your shirt or your hair.
* Don't lick or bite chopsticks.
* If you discover an insect on your plate, behave as if nothing has happened; hide it under a leaf or vegetable at the side of the plate and carry on.
* No matter how much you detest what you are eating, swallow it.
* Don't reach across others, yawn or blow on your food.
On "Appearance":
* Braces and belts should not be worn simultaneously.
* Never wear safari suits for business; they are for shooting elephants in.
* Waistcoats are dubious. Most people who wear them these days have T-shirts underneath, are young and angry and trying to form a rock band. And that goes for the males as well.
* Well-mannered people do not do business in short-sleeved shirts.
* On no account should women dress provocatively in business. Whether they are meeting men or other women, all distractions of the flesh - including legs and upper arms - should be modestly covered. If a woman is unsure about her potential for distraction, she should ask a male she feels comfortable with to give her a candid assessment.
TO Elizabeth Bay House this week to sup with His Imperial Highness Dr Geza von Habsburg. This is not as swagger as it sounds. I met Geza a few years ago when he was head of Christie's office in Geneva. Since then he has become something of a world expert on the luxurious creations of the Russian Imperial jeweller Carl Faberge' and it was in this role that he was making his first visit to Australia, assisting at the launch of a new line of luxury products bearing this esteemed brand. Forget about Brut by Faberge' and Faberge' jeans. This new Faberge' stuff is distinctly up-market, which is possibly why the first Faberge' boutique in the country will open at Crown Casino in Melbourne. I asked HIH, who was born in Hungary, fled to Switzerland, went into exile in Portugal, was schooled in England and lives in New York, if he collected Faberge', the ridgy didge stuff, of course. He told me he once had a modest collection but sold it to pay his sons' school fees in England. "I don't regret it in the least," he said. "It was money well spent."
BOB Cherry is a star. Successful nurseryman, he's also a fanatic about plants, collecting many rare species in the wild in China, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and, most recently, Chile. All of these he nurtures adjacent to the greenhouses at his thriving Central Coast nursery, which are crammed with an astonishing number of unusual camellias and magnolias, not to mention thousands of other plants guaranteed to make any serious gardener's heart leap. This weekend, he is throwing open his private paradise to the public between 10 am and 5 pm, admission free. The address is Paradise Plants, Cherry Lane, Kulnura.
BAREFOOT IN THE BACH
VISITING German conductor Andreas Delfs recently gave a master class to students of the Conservatorium. He noticed that many of the students who attended did so in bare feet. Part, no doubt, of the new self-expression rampant throughout much of the education system. Herr Delfs gallantly turned down a fee for his appearance, suggesting to Conservatorium officials that they used the money to buy shoes for their students.
© 1997 Sydney Morning Herald