The country of Tunisia

I've been lucky/unlucky to have been to Tunisia 3 times in the past. Every time I've had some interesting experiences. I'm sure Andrew Earl could atest to this, he got horribly, horribly sick over there in about 2002 on a national team tour. However this particular story is from 2007 as we were playing some matches against Spain in a lead up tour to the Asian Championships. We had to play 2 games at a stadium about an hour from where our hotel was. So off we go in these little vans to the game. We get to the game and see that there is not 1 person here to watch the matches.....considering the other gym we had been playing in was 100m from the hotel we were slightly bemused as to why we had traveled this far.

So warm up started, we soon realised that we were in for a torrid time. The gym was i think measured at 39 degrees in temperature, with humidity being very, very high. there were no windows, fans or ventilation of any sort. So we were into matchplay and after every point we had to mop up the court with a towel, guys were slipping over left right and centre, the setters couldn't really set properly due to the sweat of the passers forearms. I remember drinking 3x1.5 litre water bottles before the end of the second set.....Matty young probably had to wear 3 different pairs of shoes throughout the match! All in all it was pretty horrible. We were all happy when the game was over.

So without showering (there was no change rooms) we were back on the shitty vans for the hour drive home. About half way home we noticed that the engine of our van was smoking profusely and there was a burning smell coming from the engine. Within a minute we had cooked our engine, leaving us stranded on a random road literally in the middle of Tunisia! Surprisingly at the time nobody was really that angry, we were just laughing about how interesting the day had been thus far. Eventually after maybe another 45 minutes we flagged down some taxis and made our way home. I will never forget Igor in the back of his taxi, shirt tied over his head leaning out the window of his taxi just yelling at our taxi for no reason all the way home!

So all in all it was just another day on tour, I get the feeling it certainly won't be the last time something like this happens!

Stuck on the side of the road!

Thumbs down for the bus service in Tunisia

Kaz looks awfully happy with Proceedings

Igor and myself post-game sweaty and dirty

Igor and Phill on the side of the road after the breakdown

The London experience

Just another quick story. In the UK for a week playing matches and we get a day to check out London, walking by the Thames by the eye and Kaz spots this bloke playing around in the sand writing something.

As you could imagine we (as well as several thousand others) were pretty surprised to see this! I'm not sure how long it would of lasted before somebody got rid of it!

Random stuff

I was home in Adelaide the other talking to my girlfriend Kate's step-mother Karen about some of the experiences I have had overseas. She was saying how it would be a good idea to write a lot of the funny and exciting experiences down so as I could remember them. Now I have had the blog on and off, but in general it has mostly been about the matches, and not so much about some of the incidents that occur outside of the court. So from now on every now and then as I remember them I'll write about some of the incidents that occur every now and then that have stuck in my mind.

For all the national team boys/other friends out there who remember some, don't be afraid to let me know about them again and i'll get round to putting them all up eventually.

The first one I'm going to start with has gone down fairly quickly in AIS folk lore. Funnily enough I wasn't actually on this tour, yet I have heard the story so much I believe I could tell it fairly truthfully (someone tell me if I'm not)

The younger AIS boys were doing there annual tour of Europe, and the happened to be in France at the time. Feeling a little peckish they decided to head into one of the local patisseries to find some baked goods. Gregory Sukochev walks in has a look around and finally decides on what he wants, walks up to the young lady behind the counter and asks for a Meringue. Unfortunately he pronounced the word as it was written.....in an English way, so essentially Mer-in-goo-eee. Of course all the boys in the store here this and crack up laughing....as well as the girl behind the counter. I guess Greg's French needs a little bit of work.

As there are no photos of the incident I've decided to put up some funny photos of Greg, he is fairly renowned for them. In fact Johnny Dekker even has a Facebook album dedicated to them!