Various Goings On as of Late

The #1 going on as of late has been moving apartments.  For the third freaking time (fourth if you factor in our temporary accommodation Martin's company put us up in for the first 2 weeks).  I lived in the USA 24 years and didn't move this many times - almost.  Oy vei.  Pain in my ass.

But I have to have an excuse for living out of cardboard boxes and having piles of clothes on the floor, so here are some social activities that have prevented me from keeping a decent house:

A friends 'hen do'

A hen do is a bachelorette party.  Different countries call it different things, and for some reason the verb 'do' means party outside of the USA.  And a bachelorette is a hen.

A bachelor, regrettably, is not called a cock - oh how appropriate that would be - but rather a stag, or sometimes buck, both being a male deer.

So the male deer marries the female chicken, and because of this blessed union I get to see butt cracks - and not an inch of skin more - at Aussie Thunder, a male revue.  Revue being the internationally understood word for "full frontal prohibited".

Boo.

A green card wedding

We kind of, sort of know this French couple.  We're not close but we run in similar circles, which is good enough for an invite to a last minute "green card wedding".  She got a job in America, and up to this point they have been dirty sinners living in filthy sin, not unlike ourselves.  Unfortunately Uncle Sam doesn't roll that way, so they had to get married immediately to appease the U.S. Department of Immigration & You Don't Get To Make Life Decisions For Yourself.

You guys, this was the best wedding I have ever been to.  No offence to readers whose weddings I have attended (rest assured your reception was waaaaay better than this one), but you see this picture?  This is a picture of the groom getting down on one knee, with a ring, asking his bride to marry him.  At their wedding ceremony.

It. Was. Awesome.

Apparently there was no engagement ring involved prior to the wedding ceremony, as this was strictly a wedding of necessity.  I don't judge because I'm quite sure it will happen to me someday, and the USA is unreasonable in matters of this nature.  But OMG, I had tears.  It was so sweet and heartfelt - and in French so I didn't understand a damn thing - and she was genuinely surprised by his ring and his proposal.  At their wedding ceremony.

I don't take a romantic view of marriage.  It's just how you prove to a government that your relationship is for real.  Seriously you guys, look at how serious and real this relationship is!  **points to piece of paper**  A green card wedding will happen to me, eventually, so I don't judge them one iota.  But still, it gave me the lovey dovey warm fuzzies.  It was magical.  All 7 minutes of it - bonus points to them, let's get to the good stuff!

A live 'Dirty Dancing' floor show

It's no surprise to most of you that I am a fanatical Rocky Horror Picture Show fan.  I love Rocky Horror.  Like, a lot a lot.

By extension of that I will attend any live "floor show" offered to me, a floor show meaning the movie playing on the big screen and actors acting out the scenes on the stage below.

Since I have dragged friends to the Rocky Horror floor show numerous times it's only fair that I join them in their number one cinematic love on stage, Dirty Dancing.  Not that I mind, mind you, because one truth will remain until my dying day: Ain't nothing sexier than 80's Patrick Swayze.  Ain't nothing.

Well....I take that back.  70's Tim Curry in drag is sexier.  Maybe.

It was super fun!  Of course.  Can you believe this is only the second time I've seen Dirty Dancing start to finish?  Yeah, I know, I'm like diseased or something!  I've seen bits and pieces on TBS (an American TV station) hundreds of times, but the only time I've seen it in its entirety was my freshman year of college, when my dorm roommate was aghast that I'd never seen it all before.  So she made me sit and watch it, right the and there.  It was the longest amount of time we ever spent awake together.

Various trips to City Hall

I make it sound like we go there often, but we've been there a total of two times.  That's actually more than most people have been there, so it's a decently impressive feat.

Vino a la City Hall

City Hall has just reopened after a bajillion dollar renovation.  Look at this gigantic organ (on the right, behind the screen)!

I'm a crap picture taker but the organ is absolutely massive.  Totes impressive.  The place is all around beautiful, as it well should be after spending beaucoup bucks on the reno.  Ahh, the beauty of it:

Wait - whut?

Swastikas in City Hall!  In the bathrooms of all places!  I'm sure it's an original design of the who-knows-how-old building, but seriously.  Woah.

I should get off my arse now and unpack the new apartment a little.  I know I need to, but I know won't.  Not until company comes over.  It's a dirty little secret of mine that I don't clean/tidy up/not live in filth until people come over.

Somebody come visit me before the rats form a society and take over!  I kid, I kid.

But seriously, though, I don't do any housework until I have guests to impress.

We No Speak Americano - Part Deux

It's been over a year since my first post about the crazy shiz Australians say.  It's high time for another dip in the murky waters of what Australians consider the English language.  So put on your budgie smugglers (my last post explains what those are)....the water's great!  

H is pronounced haytch
Everybody knows that the Commonwealth countries (USA's neighbor to the north included) call the letter Z "zed".  Like, they made up a whole new word for the letter.  Well, Australians have taken it one step further and created a new word for another letter.  In both instances I deem this entirely unnecessary.  Z and H already have a name.  No need to go around making up more words.

"Keen as mustard"
I like the word keen.  It means eager or excited for something.  Keen as mustard, though.  What the hell does that mean?

Ahh, quite the literal bunch these Aussies are.

"Insert word here as"

This is probably my favorite linguistic phenomenon, and I use it whenever possible.  It's equal parts ridiculous and fun to say:

"It's hot as."
"I'm hungry as."
"That is funny as."

As what?!  At least there's an explanation for the mustard.  If you're not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition, you surely shouldn't be able to end a sentence with no end at all!

Bub = baby
Little Prince Georgie is widely known as The Royal Bub.  This word is adorable and should be adopted by the masses.  So cute.

Kerb = curb
The meaning is the same, but the spelling is different.  Same for tyre and tire.  My theory is this, and be warned it's an asshole American theory: We invented it, so we get to make the decisions.

USA! USA! USA! We're #1!  We're #1! We're #1!

This theory mainly applies to which side of the road we drive on.  Damn it, people, we invented the car so we get to decide!  Driving on the left side of the road terrifies me in a way few things in life do.  I wish so badly that America got to decide which side of the road the world drives on.

"She'll be right"
This is probably my second favorite Aussie saying.  No wait, scratch that, it's my first favorite.  Because it is so quintessentially Australian!  And so wildly, deliriously, childishly optimistic.  It means "everything will be OK" and can be used in the most innocent, innocuous situations to the most dire, hopeless ones.  Such optimism.  I love it.

Expletive is pronounced ex-plee-tive
Yeah, no.  Not even close.  And on that note...

Blooming = effing
If you're in the presence of your grandma or your boss and can't let the ex-plee-tives fly quite as freely as you'd like just say "It was blooming awesome" instead.

"Rattle your dags"
So this one is admittedly more Kiwi than Australian, but it's awesome and I have adopted it into my vernacular, so it's going here.  Let's break this down piece by piece.

There's no delicate way to say this, much less show it.  Buuuut here we go:

Dags are dingle berries.  Dried crap pieces stuck to the backside of a sheep.  These are a thing so pervasive they actually have a name of their own.  That fact alone is worthy of note and praise.

Apparently, when sheep start to run their dags jangle together and make a delightful wind chime-like noise.  Yeah, I'm totally kidding about that but when they run they do clank together and rattle.

So telling someone to rattle their dags, literally, means to hurry your ass up.

Brilliance.

I've decided I'm going to end each one of these posts, which are super fun to write might I add, with one of these:

Ole!  

(Australians don't even remotely say that, but it totally looks like that Barbie is saying it.) 

Sunny Coast

Brisbane is sandwiched between two areas, Sunshine Coast to the north and Gold Coast to the south.  I don't really quite "get" what these areas are, since they are not cities, but are treated as such.

Australians wouldn't dare say a full word without butchering it, so naturally the Sunshine Coast is known as the Sunny Coast.  Pay no heed to the fact that the words Sunny and Sunshine contain the same number of syllables, making the nickname no great saver of time.  It's just how the English language is slaughtered here day in and day out.

We went up to the Sunny Coast one fine summer day for a day of beaching for some, laying in the shade reading for others (points finger to self).  As you can tell from the weather this was a while ago, as it is now smack in the middle of winter and it is freezing.  Well, "freezing" in the way that 65 degrees during the daytime could be considered cold.

Our day in Noosa, Queensland resulted in our very first sighting of a wild koala:

They're so cute and lazy.  They sleep 23 hours a day and rarely ever leave their home tree.  An animal of my own heart.

We enjoyed some beautiful natural scenery:

And some really not beautiful natural scenery:

In the northern hemisphere we have nicknamed this fine swimwear garment a 'banana hammock', but down here they're called 'budgie smugglers'.  A budgie being this cute little bird:

I will leave you with a fun fact: Speedos are an Australian invention.  I didn't know this until I moved here.  I can't believe any country would actually brag about this, the way the inventors of zippers and penicillin are proud of their contribution to the world.

Tasty Food

That creepily ambiguous box 'o grub sums it up nicely.  There is lots of Tasty Food here!  And I'm doing my best to eat it all.  Here's a sampling of our culinary adventures:

Bulani

Holy crap, you guys, bulani is one of the tastiest things I have ever eaten.  If you've never heard of bulani before, hold on to your hats.  Allow me to blow your mind and tastebuds.  It's an Afghani dish that is stuffed with potatoes and crack cocaine.  So.  Unbelievably.  Good.  It's like a quesadilla made by the hands of angels.  Then dipped in crack cocaine.

If you're lucky enough to live in a place with an Afghani restaurant I implore you - run, do not walk, towards the bulani!  I'm barely ashamed to admit that Martin and I ordered an extra serving of bulani for dessert......before ordering dessert for real.  So good!

Sour cream + sweet chili sauce

Sweet chili sauce is to Australia what malt vinegar is to the UK, and what salsa is to the US (because people like to say salsa -Jerry Seinfeld).  It is the beloved condiment.  And mixed with sour cream it is divine!  Genius, too.  Why have 1 dipping sauce when you can have 2?

Sour cream in Australia is incredibly thick.  It's dang near a solid, but I've never met a sour cream I didn't love.  Mixed with sweet chili sauce it goes to a whole new level.  It is the yin and yang of deliciousness.  So awesome with chips fresh out of the fryer [the dirtier, the better]!

(I'll explain those big 'ol balls in a future post.)

Hot rock

This is a fun dining concept: Raw meat + a 400 degree slab of rock = cook your own dinner.  I wouldn't recommend hot rock dining on a steamy evening, because sitting over a rock that is several hundred degrees is a sweaty experience.  It would be great in a North Dakota winter!

I had chicken satay skewers and Martin had a tuna steak.  Tuna requires 1/100th the cooking time of chicken, so we weren't really eating in tandem but I enjoyed it.  I'm not sure if Australia invented this but I've never seen it anywhere else before.  Gimmicky, but fun.

Philly cheese steak

Would you believe I've never had a Philly cheese steak before?!  And I've been to Philadelphia!  Albeit as an idiotic 16-year-old who didn't know that was the one thing you had to do there.  So I made up for lost time roughly 10,000 miles away, though sadly, there was ne'er a jar of Cheese Whiz in sight.

Guzman y Gomez

Do you like Chipotle?  When eating Chipotle do you ever think, "Man, I really wish I had paid double for this burrito, and I also wish it was half the size"?  Oh you have?  Well then Guzman y Gomez is the place for you!

Don't get me wrong, Guzman y Gomez is delish, and at the rate they're popping up all over the country they're doing damn well.  But it ain't cheap, and the burritos ain't huge.  Such is life in Australia.  I haven't eaten at their competitors Mad Mex and Burrito Bar enough to make the declaration about which is best.  I am just grateful to be in a country where you can get a burrito at all.  Some places are not so lucky.

I'll make a separate post about traditional Aussie food.  There is some wild (literally and not) edible stuff down here that the culinary world needs to know about!

Viva la Mexico

A bunch of my gringo amigos and I got together on Cinco de Mayo (that's May 5th for those who don't hablo espanol) and did what no Mexican in the history of Mexico has ever done: partied like a rockstar on Cinco de Mayo.

I'm not feeling particularly verbose at the moment so let's make this a post in pictures.  You can't have a Cinco de Mayo party without....

Tacos y sombreros for all.

Margaritas made of freshly squeezed lime juice (hell yeah).

Whackin' a pinata (the first of my lifetime).

CANDY!

Tequila shots!

And of course, juggling limes after the tequila shots.

"You know you don't need to get drunk on Cinco de Mayo - you're 30" a grown-up friend of mine pointed out.  I will have you know this is the first May 5th that I've ever "celebrated" this "holiday" in all my years.

If someone is offering me a Sunday of day drinking, Mexican food and wearing funny hats then dang nam it I ain't going to refuse!

Melbourne

Back in February we made a trip to one of Australia's must-see urban destinations, Melbourne.

Melbourne is kind of an anomaly in that the weather is rather un-Australian and, as an extension of that, is totes like Europe.  So it is fitting that we went when we did because our friends from Europe were in town.

She's Kiwi (I honestly don't know the technical term for a New Zealand citizen) and he's Norwegian.  I met her at my second stint in Norwegian-language-for-immigrants class.  I decided to re-enroll in the class for the sole purpose of meeting new friends, not to actually learn the language, so, score!

They were in town visiting family so we decided to coincide our visit with theirs.  As the relatively new parents to a baby girl we had to find a family friendly way to spend our day together.

So off to the aquarium we went!  Martin and I have been known to go to aquariums by our adult selves, so the child was really just an excuse to pay a ridiculous sum of money to see a few fishes.  And!

It was a nice touch to have penguins at an aquarium.  They were walled in by glass, which was nice, to keep you protected from 1) the cold and 2) the horrible, horrible stank they produce.

I am just not a picture taker like so many of my gender, therefore I didn't get a picture of all of us together.  Ho hum.  After the aquarium we spent the rest of the afternoon sitting in the shade, drinking beer outdoors.  Perhaps parenthood isn't all drudgery and misery after all!

Melbourne is famous for its "laneways", which are just dingy alleys covered in graffiti that have been gentrified.  Out with the bums, in with the uber hip cafes!  In Australia they are the height of cool and all other cities aspire to have laneways like Melbourne.  Exhibit A:

We visited the Immigration Museum, which I highly recommend.  People don't realize that Australia is every bit the land of immigrants that America is, I'd argue even more so.  It told the story of various immigrants through the first wave up until the present.  It was so fascinating, and only cost $10 admission which, coincidentally, is about how much it cost for British people to immigrate here.

Value for money, interesting history (don't forget the overt racism!) and comical fart noises in the instillation that replicated the facilities on early immigrant ships:

A stop not to be missed in Melbourne!

Not so thrilling (and nearly double the price I might add) was the Eureka Skydeck 88, which is a building with a lookout on the 88th floor.  Eh, boring.  Maybe it didn't enthuse me because not two months before I had been to the Taipei 101 in Taiwan.  In comparison the Eureka Skydeck was a real snoozer.  There wasn't any commentary on what you were seeing out each window, and the circumference of the building was surprisingly small.  This was the highlight:

WoOoOoOoOoOah!

But on the plus side, I experienced my first Gaytime!

A Golden Gaytime, to be exact.

Golden Gaytimes are an ice cream treat on a stick that clearly were created so long ago that the name was totally innocent.  Today they're just a vehicle for myriad gay jokes, of which I took full advantage.  I love having Gaytimes with whoever I'm with, be they man, woman or child!

Cities are just cities, you can find them anywhere in the world.  This is my mantra about traveling in Australia.  This country/continent has outrageous scenery and natural wonders, so why spend all your time in cities?

If you haven't caught my drift I'm trying to segue into the fact that we got out of the city to see some nature.

The Twelve Apostles

The Twelve Apostles are a series of "limestone stacks" (I say rock formations) and are the highlight of the Great Ocean Road.  And there ain't twelve of them.  There never were!  This one used to be connected to the mainland:

When the bridge fell it stranded a guy and his mistress out on the rock.  Their faces were all over the news, so not only was his infidelity revealed to the world it was also discovered that he was skipping work that day so he lost his job and his wife.  That story is almost too good to be true in the "karma's a bitch" file, but even if it's an urban legend it's a delicious one.

Safety first!

I also saw my first in-the-wild kangaroos!

They frequent golf courses, so our tour guide knew exactly where to find them.  I had been in Australia a whole year without seeing any wild 'roos (at least alive ones)!

Fun fact: In grad school when Martin and I got the idea into our heads that we wanted to move to Australia we had our sights set on Melbourne.  He even interviewed thrice with his company to do a transfer there, and after dragging their feet for eight friggin' months they finally came back with a "Thanks but no thanks".

The Brisbane office, on the other hand, took eight days from first interview to job offer.  It was clearly meant to be that we be Queenslanders, and merely visitors to Victoria.

I will leave you with photographic evidence of how Melbourne is totally like Europe:

It Ain't All Grand

Let me preface this by saying I am very happy in Australia.  I wouldn't change this experience for the world, and I have a great life here, but that doesn't mean I can't have an epic bitch and moan session every once in a while.

Ergo I present to you: my epic bitch and moan session.

Here are a few things that really blow about life Down Under:

The onions

Jeeeeeesus, they must pump their onions full of steroids here.  They are so strong, therefore it legitimately hurts to chop them.  I have had to leave the room before the skin was even off an onion because my eyes were welded shut.  I put cooked onions in virtually everything I cook, so this is pretty much a nightly problem for me.

Pro tip: Chewing gum while chopping onions will protect your eyes from the pain, but I find gum chewing pointless and low class so I don't keep it around.  I try to chew something when cutting Hulk onions but damn it they are painfully strong.

No jaywalking

Well, you physically can jaywalk but Brisbane actually employs "traffic" cops to bust pedestrians who jaywalk and give them a ticket.  In a country that is very American in its love affair with the motor vehicle this means pedestrians are more of a nuisance than a respected class of commuters.  So you sit and wait for the green man to appear.  And wait.  And wait.

The banking

Ok, that's unfair of me to say.  The banking in Australia has been, hands down, the best I have encountered in the world.  It was 100% quick and painless to set up an account (which I have described in detail before) and I've only been impressed with the customer service.  But here is one little quirk about the banking system here that is just downright nonsensical.

When using a debit or credit card you need to choose an account - checking, savings or credit.  This applies at Points of Sale, ATMs and anywhere else you might use a card to purchase something.  The thing is nobody knows what the hell the difference between these three choices are.  At least nobody I've met.  The bank also gives you 2 cards for your account - a Visa logo'd card and an "EFTPOS", non-logo'd card.  Now what in the hell is the use of a non Visa/MasterCard logo'd card?!  Now you have to keep track of two cards and which "account" you must "choose" for both of those cards.

The first time we used our shiny new debit card the store clerk asked, "Which account?"  We looked like right fools never having heard this question before.  "Um...the account with the money in it?" was our answer.  Wrong.  You need to selection 1 of the 3 options.  And if you pick the wrong one.....card declined; you look poor.  I always choose savings - even though the account is clearly a checking account and not a savings account - and that seems to consistently work for me. It just makes no sense.  What.  The.  Hell.

Fries with no ketchup

See that tiny cup of ketchup?  That'll run you 50 cents or more.  And you'll be lucky if purchasing ketchup (or "tomato sauce" as it's often called) is even an option at all.  Sometimes all you're offered is a tiny cup of "aioli".

Australians are crazy about aioli served with fries.  In this instance aioli translates to a boring, bland mayonnaise.  And the ketchup you can buy comes in this funky packet which looks clever...

...until you realize the end result is about 1/4 the amount of ketchup a normal packet would give you.  Fricking rip off when you've paid 70 cents for what amounts to 4 fries worth of ketchup.

The terms "chips" and "fries" are used interchangeably here, so when you see "Burger + chips" on the menu you're never quite sure if you'll get Doritos or slices of potatoes with your order.

If it's the latter you better pony up some extra cash if you want those fries to be palatable.  If poutine has taught us anything besides there is a benevolent god who loves us, it's that fries are merely a vehicle for various other delicious toppings. They are not delicious in and of themselves.  Give me my goddamn free ketchup!

It rains all the damn time

Let me be clearer: It rains all the damn time on the weekends.

You think Australia is a hot, dry country but that couldn't be farther from the truth (at least the coastal areas that are inhabited).  It downpours all the time in the fall, and this country floods more often than Europe and North America combined.

....but only on the weekends!

Seriously, Mother Nature is such a bitch.  You can spend the entire work week slogging away in your office under blue, cloudless skies.  The second the weekend hits BOOM torrential downpour.  It must cost the economy billions because nobody wants to get out and do things when the sky is falling.

But don't worry, come Monday the sun will be shining clear and bright it in the sky.

It fricking sucks so, so hard.

Solid deodorant is hard to come by

I don't know why North Americans are the only ones in this world who have realized that rolling a slimy, wet ball of goo under your arms is not an enjoyable personal hygiene experience.  

I've never bought a roll-on deodorant in my life and I'm not about to start now.  Hell, I'd rather use a 1970's can of aerosol it-might-actually-be-hair-spray deodorant than a disgusting roll-on.  So why are there 75 choices of roll-on deodorant at each store, and 1 or 2 of solid?!  Roll-ons are antiquated and disgusting so should be removed from the marketplace.

Signed, 

Everybody born after 1965

I better end my bitch and moan session now before I give myself a heart attack.  None of these pains in my ass are insurmountable.  I can always stock up on deodorant when I'm home in the US or spend my weekends holed up under a warm, dry roof, drinking.

But the worst thing of all is the distance.  This insurmountable problem will ultimately be the reason we leave this place that is perfect in every way (well, almost. See points A, B, C, D, E & F above).  It takes far too long and costs way too much to get back to the people we love the most.  I have refused to look at a globe since we got here, lest the reality of just how remote this place is really hits me.  A flat wall map I can do.  A globe?  Never.

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do.  So throw off the bowlines.  Sail away from the safe harbor.  Catch the trade winds in your sail.  Explore.  Dream.  Discover." - Mark Twain