No, the toilets don’t flush in the other direction. As a matter of fact, they go straight down, with force. Seems like this is another myth, like the flying cars. We live our entire lives just to be disillusioned.

Actually, the supposed greatest country in the world doesn’t have this flushing thing worked out. Every toilet Down Under has two buttons. Depending on whether you need a big flush or a little, whether you go number one or two. Speaking of saving water, I’ve got one of those vaunted low-flush toilets in my house in Santa Monica and all it means is that the dooty doesn’t go down and you’ve got to keep flushing, using more water, and ultimately have to resort to employing the plunger anyway.

I’ve got to tell you. Australia is like a foreign country. First and foremost because of the language. I can’t understand a fucking thing! And it’s not only the accent, but the terminology. Some phrases are incomprehensible, like "bumping uglies", others you can figure out, but you crack up. Like the sign to beware of the roads becoming "frosty". As for "bumping uglies", that’s a euphemism for sex.

But the people, they’re so friendly. They take extra time to make sure you get where you want to go. They don’t seem to be on the fast track. Then again, we’re in the Blue Mountains, a resort area two hours north of Sydney. I’ll see what it’s like in the city when we land in the metropolis next week, for the AustralAsian Music Business Conference, after jaunts to the Great Barrier Reef and Ayers Rock (Uluru, excuse me).

Yes, convicts built a ton of the infrastructure. But one has to admire the pluck of anybody who leaves home and ends up somewhere so far away, especially before the days of the Internet.

And speaking of the Internet, it’s so weird to be hours AHEAD! Right now it’s nine a.m. Friday, while it’s still Thursday afternoon in L.A. As for the U.K… The other night I got e-mail from Jon Webster when everybody’s usually asleep. But then I realized it was ten thirty in the morning there!

So, I’m sitting at my PowerBook listening to Kenny Chesney’s "Never Wanted Nothing More". Funny how you can take your music with you everywhere now. And the iPod has made it here too. The woman on the tram had the telltale white earbuds, which she removed just before we got on. We live in a world inundated with music, reading the financial reports you’d never know.

The Blue Mountains are at 1,000 meters (yup, the Aussies converted to the metric system, even though we never did, going back on a promise like we do too many times), and there’s this Grand Canyon that was cut when the Colorado hadn’t even started eroding the land in Arizona. There’s a long long drop, and you go down into the old mine, on a shaft that’s 52 degrees, VERY steep, and hit a different ecosystem. There was this great IMAX movie about them finding a species of tree down there that was thought to be extinct. It makes you respect the world. Or, as George Carlin always says, "save yourself, the world will survive".

And speaking of saving yourself. It’s so weird to read that the stock market crashed yesterday, and there was an earthquake last night. I’m connected, but so far away.