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me "What are you going to Albuquerque for?" Well, as I explained to him then, it is a tradition that any Australian who happens to be in the country at the relevant time has to attend Bubonicon, And the DUFF winner, of course, has an obligation to spread herself around and not roost in San Francisco indefinitely. impenetrable Southern accent, but the pantomime was exactly the same as at home (though none of the apparently blase passengers were paying the slightest attention), Prior to takeoff I had a most interesting conversation with one of the net-fangled male flight attendants. He was telling me what a good idea it was that the airlines were now obliged to hire men for this job. It was a fact, he informed me proudly, that in his company's last four crashes the girls had stood aside while the men opened the emergency exits... grannie from New York), but I managed to see a bit of the Grand Canyon over the wing of the plane. On the other side of me was an architecture student, who knew we had a building in Australia made of shells. Eventually I worked out that this was the Sydney Opera House. He wanted to know if there were any jobs in Australia; this seemed to be a favourite question, once I had convinced people that I really did not come from England. The other most popular question was "Do you still have censorship?", this from the better-informed people, very few of whom in any case had ever heard of Melbourne unless they had visited on R&R at some time. I trotted out my collection of colourful Aussie banknotes to amuse my travelling companions. The architecture student looked hard at the $1 bill. "And who is this lady?" "That," I said, "is the Queen." "Oh, you have kings and queens down there?" "No, no. It's like Canada, That is the Queen of England." know anything about Canada either... me down the last four steps and pushed me in the back way, He informed me of the existence of the hotel courtesy-bus, and eventually made some sort of local history by declining a tip (it had been "interesting talking to me"). The driver of the courtesy-bus, when I rather stupidly asked if I was supposed to tip hi, replied that it was up to me, so I gave him 50c. I never did get used to tipping – after a while I concluded that you tipped all porters and waitresses, but I never really worked out how much was the correct amount. The rationale, I was told, was that these people were paid inadequate wages, with no penalty rates, on the assumption that they would make up the difference in tips. This did not seem to promote the dignity of labour; portering, however, does not seem to be regarded by some people as degnified work anyway – not once after I left Hawaii did I see a Caucasian working as an hotel or airport porter. and handrails. The public loos also had a suitably altered cubicle which was very elean since nobody else was ever game to use it (no lock on
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