Police State

After months of whingeing about APEC, most of the Sydneysiders are now off taking advantage of having been given an extra bank holiday today, you know, so they can clear off out of town for the weekend.

And as you'd expect, (1) we can't go because Darren's on call for the international chopperdocs and (2) it's been pissing down with rain all day, the usual bank holiday menu chez nous.

Now you might be wondering why the APEC meeting isn't being held in Canberra, and it's a good question because Canberra's the capital, not Sydney. The official line is that Canberra doesn't have enough hotel rooms to accommodate the visiting dignitaries (and I reckon you'd need something like the MGM Grand to accomodate the Bush entourage alone), but we all know it's about showing off; the prime minister wanting everyone in the world to see what a beautiful city we've got and how you'd be stupid not to want to come here.

The problem is, it's nothing special in the rain. In fact it looks like Newcastle-upon-Tyne, especially with the bridge and everything. Don't get me wrong, it really is the most beautiful city in the world, and there's nothing I'd love more than to kick out the undeserving Aussies and supplant them with some nice poms, but there's no getting away from the fact that it relies heavily on the deep blue sky for it's appeal and that the government must be livid that the place is shrouded in drizzle; dark thunderous clouds looming overhead, and there's no let up in sight all weekend.

(Though not so in Melbourne, which probably pisses them off even further).

The foreign dignitaries are all safely holed up in hotel rooms down the road, including Mr Bush and Condoleeza Rice, both of whom ignored my security advice about the backpackers hostel and opted instead for the Intercontinental Hotel on Macquarie street, which apparently does a much better breakfast. The security surrounding them has been astonishing; a sniper postioned on the very tip of the opera house's largest sail, an enormous fence around the CBD (which they claim is to prevent climate protestors) and workers in the AMP tower (which overlooks the Intercontinental) apparently ordered to close their blinds and, if they see any helicopters overhead, not to even look at them.

The APEC security staff have been thinking up all sorts of novel ways to flex their muscles, including ordering that all the cafes down MacQuarie street bring in their cutlery from the pavement tables in case it falls into the wrong hands and demanding to know what newspaper reporters are writing in their notebooks. Workers in the AMP tower have been ordered not to cross the road to the Museum of Sydney, so the owner of the cafe there reckons his pockets will be $30,000 lighter by Monday morning.

The meetings are going on all weekend, and rather predictably they've chosen to hold them inside the opera house, though the inside of the opera house is so incredibly ugly that they've had to hang curtains all over the place to detract from the grey concrete rafters and general gloominess, which is a bit like chucking an IKEA throw over a grotty old sofa and hoping nobody notices.

(It's amazing that this absolutely beautiful structure is so awful on the inside. The architect who designed it walked off the job before it was completed, which may or may not be the reason, but either way, it's like biting into a cherry bakewell and finding it tastes like a tomato).

Anyway, who cares about the US black hawk helicopters they've shipped from across the Pacific, we've got our own choppper at the hospital and today we went to meet it.