Resurrection and Harry Potter

Oh hello there!
So, I know it's been a while. This blog was supposed to be for my travels so when I was home I just didn't have the willpower to write another update, but I've missed it! So I think I'll try to resurrect this blog... after all, I'm starting college in a month and I'm sure I'll have some interesting things to talk about.
But before that, let's talk Harry Potter! I'm talking, of course, about the movie Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, which came out almost 2 weeks ago. I've seen it three times now (no judging) and had some thoughts so I wanted to write them down. Just a warning, not only is it spoiler-filled, it probably won't even make a whit of sense if you haven't seen the movie. I don't like explaining myself.
First of all, my feelings in general. I have to admit that the first time I saw it I didn't love it. I think this is in part because it was the wee hours of the morning, and I just had to get over how different it was from the book. I had just finished rereading HBP so I noticed everything that was different or missing-- I didn't necessarily go "It's supposed to be like that!"-- I would just recognize that they had changed it. That always takes a bit of getting used to. I also felt it was very different from the previous two Potter movies, which went bang-bang-bang, action-important plot point-explosion-more action. This film was definitely slower, with an emphasis on character development rather than action. I definitely love that, but again, it took some getting used to.
After the next two viewings, I decided I really loved the movie. After thinking about it, I can understand how a lot of the changes in plot make for a better movie (not all, mind. I still would have loved to have The Other Minister in there). I know they left out a lot of the memories, which are obviously important to the book plot, but I don't really mind-- I'm sure they'll make it work somehow, and the memories do tend to break up the plot quite a lot. On my first viewing I thought some of the transitions between scenes were pretty random-- for example, the placing of Spinner's End in between a scene in the Burrow and one in Diagon Alley-- but the later viewings allowed to me see the story arc much more clearly. Scenes actually seemed to flow together quite well, even if they were in a different sequence than in the book-- for example the Burrow and Spinner's End scenes mentioned above were loosely linked by a photo of Draco in the paper at the Burrow.
And now, for some random, unlinked and unchronological thoughts:

• There was a ten minute portion of the movie that every time gave me major flashbacks to A Very Potter Musical. (If you haven't seen it, you must click). Draco says he doesn't want to go back to Hogwarts next year and then Ron shovels food into his mouth while Hermione is all worried about Harry... I just saw so clearly where they got all their jokes from.
• I'm not opposed to the scene in the diner at the beginning, but it was just kinda weird with Dumbledore randomly showing up and being all "Oh, btw, you're not going back home blah blah blah." Also, Gambon kept tilting his head and gazing into the distance for no reason. Stop.
• On the subject of Dumbledore, his lines which differed from the book were sometimes spot-on and sometimes totally off the mark. For example, I really liked the recurring theme in his speeches about a boy who had been at Hogwarts and made all the wrong choices (ok, this might be in the book)... the students are Voldemort's greatest weapon, etc. (Especially how they showed Draco not listening at that point. LOVED it.) But then there was the out-of-nowhere questioning Harry on his love-life. I felt like that was just Kloves backtracking on all the Harry/Hermione shipping in the previous movies... he had to have Harry so clearly that she was JUST A FRIEND, especially before that scene on the staircase where he's all comforting. Also Dumbledore tells Harry that he needs a shave right at the end... I mean, what?? Is that supposed to show that they're best buds and Harry will be totes sad when Dumbles dies? Cause it just made me feel awkward.
• On the subject of the scene on the staircase... at first I was thinking to myself "But wait, they don't spill out their feelings to each other! They are British! They keep it locked inside and communicate solely through sly glances!" But then I realized that yes, this is a movie. In the book we "hear" Harry thinking that he is so totally in love with Ginny, and he thinks Hermione knows cause of the looks she is giving him... in the movie we needed that conversation to make it all clear.
  
• And on that subject of book-to-movie translation, I feel I have to comment on the Dumbledore death scene. A lot of people have said that Harry would never have just stood there, it's stupid he wasn't frozen. In part, I agree. But the other part of me recognizes that (as shown in the train scene), a character under Petrificus Totalus is totally boring to watch (not even any facial acting!) and also, it would have been very hard to explain the whole silent-spell-Harry-is-frozen-now thing. The way they did it wasn't perfect, but movie-Harry I think has more trust in Dumbledore than book-Harry. Book-Harry distrusted Snape and wouldn't have followed Dumbledore's orders to stay still, whereas movie-Harry voices that distrust of Snape far less frequently. It's not a change I necessarily like, but it's one I respect.
• Tom Felton and Alan Rickman. Enough said, both were absolutely perfect.
  
• I was so glad Maggie Smith got a bit more to do in this movie, and I think she did wonderfully, as always. She had the (perfect) funny scene with Harry and Ron in the hallway, and then what I thought was a very nice moment at the end in Dumbledore's office. I really liked that McGonagall played a slightly bigger role, as she is pretty important throughout the books.
• Right after the cave scene there is a flash to Draco on his bed, presumably in the Slytherin dorm. All I could think the third time I saw this was... why do Slytherins get some lame beds?? It was an iron bedstead with a tiny mattress... the Gryffindors get awesome four-posters and the Slytherins get those gross beds? I do not think Draco would have put up with that, is all I'm saying.
• The birds, oh, the birds. I liked how they were used for the whole showing-Draco-fixing-the-Vanishing-Cabinet thing, especially how Harry opened the Cabinet near the end to see a bird fly out, thus showing the viewer that Draco had succeeded. But I just can't help but laugh that once again, birds (and their deaths) are the artistic focus of a Harry Potter movie. Do you think Alfonso Cuaron was consulted?
• And finally, ewwww Tonks and Lupin. I never liked the couple in the book and in the movie they just reminded me that a) I don't like either of the actors for those characters and b) Ewwww. They're so mismatched and awkward and I don't like it. Sorry, I feel like I have to be nice because they die. But WHATEVER

And that is it. I'm not going to apologize for it being rambly and long because by now I hope you're used to that on this blog. Good night!

Goodbye, New Zealand!

So I thought I had another South Island post in me, but I really don't. After Queenstown we drove to Christchurch, which is a pretty long way to drive in a day, though there was some really nice scenery. Then the next morning we went on to Kaikoura, known for its whale watching-- unfortunately, there were no whales about so I didn't do much there, and the next day it was back to Picton to get the ferry back to Wellington.
And now I'm leaving Wellington (finally)! I fly tomorrow to Sydney where I have 2 1/2 days to pack up all the stuff I left there (and hopefully look around the city one more time), and then a few days in San Francisco, and then I'm back home on May 6th. In total I'll have been out of America for 237 days, or almost 8 months. I think that's pretty good going.
I've spent the last few days trying to do all the "Kiwi" things I can think of (and of course eating all the Kiwi food I love). The food included classic Kiwi dip, which is just a packet of dried onion soup mixed with reduced cream, with a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar added. It's a bit weird, but suprisingly good. I've also been enjoying Tim Tam slams, for which you use a Tim Tam (delicious chocolate biscuit) as a straw to drink hot chocolate. Yum.
Yesterday I finally went to the zoo so that I could finally see a real Kiwi! (The animal this time, not the people.) They were every bit as adorable as I expected... here's a (slightly blurry/dark) picture. Kiwis are nocturnal so we couldn't use flash.
The kiwi is the little blurry thing eating out of the keeper's hand, in case you can't tell. This kiwi actually lost one of its legs-- watching it hop around on only one leg is very amusing!
Though this isn't really New Zealand-related, the second best part of the zoo were the giraffes. We happened to wander by them right as it was feeding time, so got to help feed them, which was pretty cool.
Oh, and I also was finally made to try a butter chicken pie. Though good, it basically felt like eating a heart attack. I was thankful to go to the gym afterwards.

Today we had lunch at my favourite Wellington cafe (Fidel's on Cuba st), and now I'm just finishing up packing! I'll be sorry to say goodbye to Wellington and New Zealand and general, but I'm looking forward to the next few days, and espeically to finally being home again.
Hopefully I'll see you soon!

Ice and Rain

Right, so at the end of my last post, we had gotten to... the middle of nowhere, New Zealand. We were gonna stay there for a little while. After a night in Barrytown (seriously. Nowhere.) we headed down to Franz Josef, a town that exists almost entirely to support tourism for the stunning Franz Josef glacier. Named after the emperor (maybe) of the Austrian (possibly) who "discovered" it, the Franz Josef glacier is... big, and moves... fast. Obviously the very knowledgeable guide who took us up the glacier was wasted on me-- this is what I get for not taking notes!
Basically we had a full day off in Franz Josef to do whatever we wanted... some people from the bus did a helihike, which is essentially like heliskiing-- you take a helicopter quite far up the glacier and then get to explore around for a few hours. The helicopter lets you get to a part of the glacier that is almost impossible to get to on foot, because in the middle the crevasses get really deep etc. But I opted for the slightly tamer full-day hike. After a 45 minute walk (through rain forest! Very unusual to have a glacier next to rain forest. Something to do with the mountains and coast) to the beginning of the glacier we strapped on our crampons and began to climb up. Guides had gotten there before us to start carving steps into the glacier to make climbing easier-- every day they have to re-carve the steps because the glacier is moving and changing so quickly!
Anyway, it was a pretty cool day that is pretty impossible to describe with words, so here are some pictures:

Glacier from afar
Crevasse-y!
Me with an ice pick that, ok, I didn't really use.
So that was a great day, and after a good night's sleep we headed off the next morning to Makarora another... place in the middle of nowhere. Sense a theme?
But the next day was EXCITING. We woke up and it was pouring rain, which didn't put anyone in the best mood, but as we started to drive the rain stopped and the sun started coming out. We got to Wanaka, where we had an hour-long stop, and there were finally some fall colours! I guess there are more trees that change colours down in that part of the country... it was really nice to see some of the reds and oranges that we Northern Hemispherans associate with Autumn. By the time we headed back off the sun was out in force and we started passing through some gorgeous scenery-- lots of mountains, lakes, and hills that made the phrase "It's just like Lord of the Rings!" become slightly over-used. We were also going through orchard country which meant a stop for some fruit-buying as well as delicious ice cream.
THEN we got to A.J. Hacket bungee, which is the first commercial bungee site ever. They jump from an old bridge over a canyon... watching person after person fly gracefully off (and survive) from the sidelines almost made it seem tempting, but actually going up ON the bridge to watch was absolutely terrifying. I decided I was definitely not the extreme sports type.
And then we got to Queenstown.
Now, a word on Queenstown. Among backpackers, Queenstown is one of the most-talked-about destinations. Perhaps because of its proximity to the first bungee, or maybe because of its location on a lake surrounded by mountains, it is the capital of extreme sports in a country in which just about every town offers a skydive or bungee jump. For this reason, I guess I was expecting a pretty big, touristy town. I was very pleasantly surprised.
To start with, we got there in the evening and by the time we were all checked into the hostel and settled down, it was dark. We did have a very good dinner at Fergburger (my first real burger in what felt like forever and wow, was it good!), but I didn't really look around Queenstown until the next day. And the next day it was raining. Not a light drizzle, not a warm rain. It was freezing. It was pouring. I should have hated Queenstown. I should have looked outside, and then done what a few other people did-- spend the day reading or catching up online.
But I only had a day there, and I wanted to look around. So I headed out into the rain. And, against all odds, I was completely charmed by Queenstown. True, clouds obscured most of the (surely beautiful) mountains around the lake. And yes, there was no point in doing what I had planned (riding the gondola up a mountain to get panoramic views) because the top of the gondola was sitting firmly in clouds. But after getting used to feeling colder (and wetter) than I had in a long time, I really liked the place. Maybe I liked the fall colours or the many outdoorsy shops that reminded me of a small-scale US ski town, but Queenstown was one place I decided I definitely wanted to return to-- but next time in ski season, to take advantage of those mountains!
The best view I could get:I considered staying a couple nights longer, but then I remembered that no matter how charming a place is, doesn't mean I wouldn't have gotten bored after a day... and besides, maybe seeing it in sunshine would have ruined it!

Down the West Coast (The Second Best Coast in the Southern Hemisphere)

Wow, so I haven't even really gotten into my trip on here, have I?
Let's remedy that.
So that first day, after leaving Picton, we drove to the Abel Tasman National Park. This is New Zealand's smallest national park (for a small country, it sure has a lot of them!), but it is very popular-- it has a 3-day walking trail to go right through it, as well as lots of other walking and kayaking opportunities. We had lots of options for the next day, which was a non-driving day to spend exploring the Park, and 19 of us from the bus got together to take a trip on a catamaran around it. Of course, whereas the day before had been gorgeous, sunny, and hot, the next day was quite cold and cloudy. Nevertheless we went out on the boat and had a good, if chilly, time looking at the beautiful scenery of the Abel Tasman. Unfortunately my greatest desire-- to see a penguin in the wild-- was not realized, but we did see some seals. Here's Split Apple rock, which one of the people on the boat swam out to just to get a picture standing in the middle-- you couldn't have paid me to get in that water!
The next day we left bright and early to start our drive down the West Coast. We were now entering one of the most sparsely populated areas in the world. Sparsely populated by people, that is. Having spent most of my time in New Zealand in Wellington, I hadn't quite believed up till now that there are somewhere in the area of 40 million sheep in this country. I started to believe it on that drive. We passed pasture after pasture after pasture filled with sheep-- and we all enjoyed when our driver honked at them so we could classify the sheep as "sprinters" or "long distance runners."
But it was hard to become bored with sitting on a bus when a 45-minute walking stop yielded this kind of view (those are the Southern Alps coming into view in the background):
It was also on this drive that we began to experience two phenomena: The "Engineering Marvels" and the Second Bests.
First, the Engineering Marvels. As most of the roads are in New Zealand, we were driving predominately on single carriageways, winding through mountains and over rivers. The Engineering Marvels were usually bridges... one memorable one was a one-way bridge with a railway crossing right in front of it. In order to see if someone was coming the other way and it was safe to cross the bridge, you had to drive ONTO the railway crossing. Only in an area with as little traffic as this could such a bridge exist (traffic was so scarce that, like in the Northern Territory in Australia, almost every passing driver exchanged a wave and smile with our driver).

The example I most clearly remember of the Second Bests was also, in fact, a one way bridge. We were just winding around a corner when Mambo (our driver) turned on the microphone. "You guys don't want to miss this! We're just coming up to the second longest one-way bridge... in the Southern Hemisphere!" Soon after driving over that wondrous monument I realized that this was not a one-off thing... we soon started to pass lots of things that were the "second best," "second tallest," or "second biggest," of whatever it was... but only in the Southern Hemisphere. Mambo would frequently start describing something as the "second most," and after an optimistic pause someone would prompt him to add resignedly "in the Southern Hemisphere." Apparently this running joke had started on the trip in the North Island... on a slow day with a lack of landmarks Mambo had tried to get people psyched up about the Second Best Peat Bog in the Southern Hemisphere, but a passenger had called his bluff. Sure, maybe some of the accolades he gave to landmarks were real-- these things are surprisingly difficult to google, I know because I just tried-- but some of them were surely made up by bored tour guides driving the same road for the umpteenth time.
But, upon reflection, I've found the Second Best phenomenon to be as good as any to explain Tall Poppy Syndrome, which I briefly mentioned in a previous post and was asked for clarification on. The OED defines Tall Poppy Syndrome as "orig. and chiefly Austral. a perceived tendency to disparage prominent or successful people."* Basically, Kiwis don't talk themselves up. They don't brag, they don't laud their own accomplishments, and if they do become successful they can bet that there will be plenty of people around them to tear them down. As it was just explained to me, if you're the tallest poppy that's great, because you're obviously good at what you do-- but it's also very easy for someone to come around with shears and lop your head off.
While I usually say things like this through observation, Tall Poppy Syndrome is something I've been told about more than I've actually observed-- I guess it takes a keener reporter than I am to observe the lack of bragging. But this Second Best thing made me realize that it really is true. I mean, if these facts were being made up, why weren't they the longest bridges and the best peat bogs? Or maybe the second best in the world instead of just the Southern Hemisphere. New Zealanders won't say that their country is the best at anything, the most beautiful.** Sure, they're proud of it, but they draw the line at bragging. Wellingtonians love their city, and they'll tear apart Auckland (their main rival) any day of the week. But they're only praising themselves through criticizing others... rarely will you hear someone talk about how much they love Wellington, how beautiful the harbour is and how great the cafes are-- you'll just hear about City X's severe deficiency in cafes.
So I guess it was just too much to ask to cross the longest one-way bridge in the Southern Hemisphere. After all, what if someone tried to one-up it? Much safer to be in second place.

At the end of our trip, by the way, we all chipped in to get Mambo the Second Best t-shirt in the Southern Hemsiphere proclaiming him the Second Best Stray Driver in the Southern Hemisphere. Wouldn't want the other drivers to lop off his head, after all.

*The Australian bit of this definition drew anger from Tams and the response that New Zealanders are even better at being un-self-confident than Australians.
** Except perhaps rugby. And they will readily admit that they're better than the Australians at everything.

Getting on the Bus (Backpacker Culture)

Ok, so. Let’s begin near the beginning. I spent the night of March 29th in Picton, a very small town (as most of the towns for the next few days were going to be) that basically serves as a connection between the North and South Islands. This is where the big Interislander ferry from Wellington docks, but nothing much else happens there.

(The Interislander ferry, by the way, was amazing. Having never been on a cruise ship or other luxurious boat before, I was kind of in awe. I felt like I was in moving mansion.)

So I didn’t do much in Picton. But the next morning I boarded my bus. Now I think a word of explanation is needed. I did my 11-day tour on a Stray bus, which is just one of a number of hop-on hop-off bus services that are very popular in New Zealand and Australia. Both countries have a lot of backpackers that want to see a lot of the country (or, in the case of Australian backpackers, a lot of beaches and bars). These buses are really good because they bring you to landmarks/sites that are hard to get to otherwise—you really need either a bus or a car to get around Down Under. In Australia the Greyhound buses are also popular—a lot of Australian backpackers just do the East Coast route down from Cairns to Sydney, and on that route the Greyhound buses cover pretty much the same ground as backpacker buses, at half the cost. (For this reason, a lot of people on round the world tickets going home through America tell me they’re going to take the Greyhound across the country. I find it prudent to warn them that they might be a little surprised by the differences between American and Aussie Greyhounds.) So anyway, yes, these backpacker buses are really useful. They also, of course, have their downsides, like the many, many photo/walk/activity stops that can make getting anywhere extremely laborious/expensive (especially if you’re at all tempted by extreme sports and going around New Zealand). But what I consider the main downside to these buses is that as much as the tour guides try, you’re not getting Kiwi culture on them. You’re getting a good, hearty dose of backpacker culture. Which is a kind of strange beast.

So. I got on the bus in Picton. About two-thirds of the bus (including the driver/tour guide, whose Stray nickname was Mambo) had gone round the North Island together and were a pretty firm group, but there were a few newbies like me. To help us all get to know each other, Mambo got us to do what he called “speed dating,” which meant we all had to go sit with someone new, introduce ourselves and start talking to them, and then a few minutes later go find another new person. As I talked to what seemed like a hundred people (all from England or Ireland, or so it seemed), a pattern quickly emerged. First would be the exchange of names—unusual in backpacker culture, in which the first question is almost always “Where are you from?” prompting a conversation that often takes ten minutes to get around to the exchange of names. But right after the names was that golden first question, which tells a backpacker so much. Where are you from? Now, I’ve gotten this answer down to a tee, which I think is a lot more than most can say. I say “New York.” I find this specific enough that it won’t need immediate clarification (as “America” would), but suitably vague so if someone is interested they can ask “New York, New York, or just New York?” It drives me absolutely crazy that every single English person, with the exception of a few Londoners, says “England.” YOU ARE ALL FROM ENGLAND, please specify a LITTLE! Anyway, so the first question is important. And I realized quite quickly after getting to Australia that my answer was pretty unusual. But the reactions on this bus were astounding. Most people just gasped, in a tone of extreme shock, “New York!” A few said something in an awed voice such as “New York citaaaaay.” Some started reminiscing about five days they spent there five years ago, while others mentioned their long-unrealized desire to go to New York. One girl, after talking about herself for a minute, said “but New York, what’s THAT like!?” To which I oh-so-eloquently responded, “it’s like… home.”

At first I thought I got this reaction just because it was New York, seen so often in books, movies, and TV shows that people hardly think it’s real. But I soon realized that the shock wasn’t just about New York—it was in meeting an American. 300 million of us, and yet I seemed to be many people’s “second American”—in the 2-4 months they had been travelling, I was the second American they had met. Mambo told me that he can do 3-4 loops of both the North and South Island before he gets an American on his bus. I think that’s all a bit of an exaggeration, but then whenever I hear an American accent I pounce and ask where the speaker is from—to someone not constantly listening out for the accent, we are rare enough that meeting one of us is cause for surprise. (I’m sorry to say, by the way, that about half of the “American” accents I hear turn out to be Canadians. There are way more Canadians around these parts than Americans, and as a result I’ve gotten way better at identifying the Canadian accent.)

So that’s the first question out of the way. We’ve established that I am from America, that exotic land across the sea, and I have been able to dig out of the person next to me that he or she is from Bristol, or Liverpool, or Kent and yes, I do know where that is. So we arrive at the next question! “How long are you in New Zealand?” or perhaps, “how long have you been travelling?” And here, backpacker culture strikes again. There were two people on my bus on a three-week holiday. One was going around just New Zealand with his girlfriend, who was on a 3-month round-the-world trip with a group of friends. The other was just someone who (shock-of-shocks) actually has a full-time job and could only take 3 weeks off. Everyone else had epic tales to tell. They had spent a month in Australia and now had 3 weeks in New Zealand before a week in Thailand, four days in Singapore and a couple nights in Hong Kong. But no! Instead of Hong Kong, this person was going to Malaysia. And over there, they were going to have a vacation from their vacation in Fiji. Instead of going home through Asia, some were going back through the US—and had a carefully planned itinerary including four nights in Vegas (NOT over a weekend), and then a road trip through Texas to New Orleans, Florida and then up to New York. When I got round to telling my travel story, I often got confused looks. I had been in New Zealand for three months? I tried to explain the whole living-in-Wellington, not-finding-work
thing, but it took a few tries to get it right.

This is when I started to discover that pitfall of backpacker culture—a lot of backpackers just aren’t interested in staying in one place for a long time, getting to know the people, the cafes and the culture. They may have three, six, or eight months, but that doesn’t mean they’re actually going to get to know the countries they’re zooming through. They’re just getting to know a lot of people from England, Ireland, and oh yeah, Germany. Ask someone who’s taken a backpacker bus around both Australia and New Zealand for a total of two months a difference between Australians and New Zealanders and they’ll look at you blankly. Sure, they know what the two countries look like, they know that New Zealand is cheaper unless skydiving tempts you, and they know that the weather is better in Australia. But the people? Not so much. Take it as you will—backpacker culture.

I'm back!

Phew. I'm back from my two week adventure round the South Island of New Zealand, and... I don't even know where to start! I'm going to do a chronological series of blogs about all the cool things I did/places I went, but for now I'm just going to share some of my favourite pictures that I took. I ended up taking over 300, but looking through them all they start to merge into one big mountain/lake/sea vista.
So here we go:
A view of Cockle Cove in the Marlborough Sounds, my first stop. (The water is coming right up to the shore, it's just amazingly clear.)
















We got off the bus while driving from Abel Tasman national park to Barrytown for a beautiful coastal walk. Suddenly there were horses up on a ridge right abve the sea!







The sun was setting by the time we got to Pancake rocks, some awesome rock formations on the West coast.







We did a walk through some rainforest on our way to Franz Josef glacier-- here's the sun coming through a punga (New Zealand fern tree).





Our guides cutting steps on the terminal face of the Franz Josef glacier as we begin our hike up it.
















Water running through some of the blue ice of the glacier. Sometimes we walked by water that really sounded like an underground drain because it was echoing so loudly.














Me walking through a crevasse on the glacier.









We crossed the 45th parallel, which is apparently officially "Down Under." The sun had just come out when we made this stop, meaning a short photo break turned into a competition involving jumping off the marker.









Finally some fall colours on the way to Queenstown!










One of our group takes the leap at the world's first commercial bungee jump site.













Some fresh snow on the mountains behind Kaikoura on our last day!










And that's it for now! More soon.

More Food Related Wonderings

I wrote this post a while ago and am just now posting it cause it's not great, but I'm going away tomorrow for two weeks (to the South Island), so I wanted to leave something. Enjoy!

What I always find really interesting when I’m travelling is how tastes in one country got to be the way they are, and why they’re so different from tastes in another country. This is exemplified to me by the fast food options in Australia and New Zealand. (Can I say before I go any further that this isn’t exactly a well-researched blog post, though I did Google a few key facts and took the top search result to be accurate. Because if I can’t trust Google, who can I trust?)

Now, one could say, Australia and New Zealand weren’t formed all that differently from the United States. Especially Australia… colonized by the British, settlers then pushed back and murdered the native people, brought in their own lot (who happened to be convicts), and decided to form a new country. Except they never quite got there, and so their head of state is still technically the Queen. Ouch. And, ok, Australia did all of this founding business quite a few years after America and, yes, they never had a falling out with the mother country in the form of a bloody war, but still. Australia is THOUSANDS OF MILES further away from the UK than America is. I feel like the tastes of the two countries should be ENTIRELY different. And so I get back to the topic of fast food.

So let’s start off with pizza, because hopefully you’ve already read the epic pizza-related post below. Now, I know why pizza’s good in New York. We have a lot of Italian immigrants, or people of Italian descent. This is not a big secret. I’m not going to speculate on why Italians didn’t go to Australia in the 1800s or whenever they came over (see, well researched. Quality journalism.) because, well, Australia is really far away. So ok, I know that intellectually it makes sense to have better pizza in America. But that doesn’t excuse the excuse for pizza they serve here.

Now don’t even get me started on fast deli sandwiches or bagels. Just… don’t. I might cry. Deli sandwiches, as in sandwiches made to order, don’t seem to exist, and bagels are… I can’t even explain. I cry inside when I think of a New Zealand bagel. Why don't they have delis and bagels here? I guess some of it could have to do with a lack of Jewish immigrants, but it's weird. So let’s move on to the positives!

And here is where I get confused. Because one of the biggest fast food options in Australia and New Zealand is Indian food, or, basically, curries. You can go into a shop and order a curry with naan and rice for about ten NZ dollars (US$5. This place is cheap), and have it to take away in about ten minutes. This I enjoy, because I love Indian food and can never get enough of it at home. The thing is, though, that Indian curries are also very popular in England. I know why that is, once again… lots of Indian immigrants in the UK! So, the question is… did the tastes of the UK move Down Under and bring with it a love of curry, or did people from India also immigrate over this way and bring the curry with them, thus developing SEPERATELY a desire for fast and delicious Indian food. I could probably find this out with a little googling, but as I said… it’s a research-light day. Basically I can’t explain why, but I can tell you that there is a wide availability of delicious curry in Australia and New Zealand, and this is a good thing (and possibly makes up for the pizza).

The second delicious fast food phenomenon in this here region is that of PIES. Now mentioning a pie over here does not imply delicious fruit filling, it means MEAT. Lots and lots of meaty filling. There are tiny shops all over New Zealand which seem to deal exclusively in pre-made meat pies, all ready in a warming device/oven type thing to take out and consume with your hands and possibly some tomato sauce (not ketchup. See earlier post). Some of them have the addition of cheese. Apparently there is a “butter chicken pie” (butter chicken is a type of curry) that combines these two fast food phenomena, but as much as I like the two separately, the idea of a combination is revolting to me (and my arteries). I know steak pies are big in English pubs, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen little shops like they have here full of pies over in the UK. I could be wrong, but there you go. Perhaps this one just evolved on its own in this little corner of the world. Good onya, mate!

Now I shouldn’t finish my post without saying that, yes, the garangutan American fast food chains are of course present here as well. It’s not all curries and pies. They of course of McDonalds and KFC and Burger King. (Interestingly, though, in Australia BK is called Hungry Jack’s: same logo, different name. In NZ it’s Burger King.) Alas, it seems nowhere is safe from the desire for burgers, fries, and deep frying things, and I don’t think I have to ponder how that trend made it over the seas.

The Pizza from Hell

Last night was interesting. As a flat, we usually don’t order out food a lot. But yesterday Tamsin got an email from a chain called Hell’s Pizza, saying that there was a special deal on—gourmet pizzas for only $13! And we didn’t really know who was supposed to be cooking that night anyway, so we decided to bite the bullet and order in. I surrendered my laptop to Tams and we started to decide what to have.

This soon proved to be far more difficult than I would have ever imagined. I started off with: “I’m really just fine with cheese pizza. That’s what I like. Just cheese pizza!” Now, I had already encountered the New Zealand and Australian obsession with PILING things on their pizza, but I didn’t think this was such a foreign concept to them. But I was suddenly faced with everyone staring at me blankly. I think it was Tamsin’s boyfriend Daniel who finally said, in a tone of the utmost incredulity “cheese pizza???” I started to get a bit worried. “Um, yes. Cheese pizza. Y’know… tomato sauce. Cheese. That’s it.” The New Zealanders looked at each other. “Like a margherita pizza?” “Well… yes, basically.” I don’t think I’m making things up here when I say that most Americans think there is an important distinction between plain cheese pizza and a margherita pizza. Mainly that a margherita pizza is, well, fancier… you can usually SEE bits of mozzarella in it. And there are sometimes whole tomatoes! I just wanted your bog-standard greasy cheese pizza but I didn’t want to get into semantics with this lot.

The Hell’s Pizza web site seemed to be malfunctioning. We couldn’t get at the menu. So Tams started researching other pizza places in Wellington… apparently now that we had seized on the idea of having pizza, nothing but the best would do. She found a few and showed me pictures, asking if this was what I was imagining when I said “cheese pizza” (always said with audible air quotations). None were a perfect match, so I acquiesced to going local and having their crazy pizza, if we could ever order it.

Finally the Hell’s Pizza site seemed to kick into gear. But now we were faced with options. So many options. Not only do all of these pizzas seem to have at least five toppings, they had names all in keeping with the “hell” theme. This was going to be an ordeal. We started browsing. I liked the sound of “Sinister”… salsa, re-fried beans, jalapenos (and about a thousand other toppings), it sounded pretty delicious, if not quite what I imagined pizza should be. The others agreed this could be one of our options… and look, there was even a button to add cheese! Moving past the fact that this was being called a pizza when it didn’t even have cheese to begin with, I tried to explain to them that I it wasn’t that I needed cheese on my pizza, it was that I wasn’t really interested in all these other toppings. They seemed unconvinced. Obviously I was a cheese addict, if I wanted cheese pizza. It was suggested that I could just “go crazy” on the block of Edam in the fridge.

It was a few minutes after Tamsin discovered that there was an option to add or take away any topping, including salt, that I retired to my room and left them to their ordering. I would eat whatever came.

So when I re-emerged ten minutes later, I assumed they had finally ordered. Oh no. The site had malfunctioned again. But we knew what we wanted now… so couldn’t they just call? Well apparently our special promotion involved saying the phrase “show me the money.” Perhaps because of their extreme aversion to exhibitionists, none of the New Zealanders would stoop to that. They were apparently content to starve. So I put aside my intense fear of ordering food over the phone and called up. An hour after we had set out, dinner was ordered.

Then we hit the next roadblock. Between five of us, the meal came to $50. I had $35. Daniel had some “shrapnel.” Nobody else had cash. New Zealanders rarely carry cash—they can charge almost everything (except, apparently, pizza deliveries) to EFTPOS cards (like debit cards). This seems at once smart (less chance of being mugged for cash!) and extremely inconvenient to me, but there you go. So off the others trooped to the ATM in the village. Of course the pizza arrived before they did, meaning I had to run around the house looking for cash (and thankfully discovered that we did in fact have enough).

So, after that epic adventure, how was the pizza? Well, it was no American pizza. Other than the Mexican-themed one, we had “Grimm,” with an apricot base, chicken, pine nuts, spring onion and a few other things, and a meat-heavy one. In this and my other pizza-eating experiences over here, focus seemed to be on the toppings rather than the crust, which was neither New York-thin nor Chicago-deep. Just non-descript, doughy, blah. The one I had chosen (which remained my favourite) was the least favourite of the others because it “didn’t really work as a pizza.” None of them really worked as a pizza to me, but then I’m just an ignorant American. They were fairly tasty, and I ended up disgustingly full. And I guess that's really the point of pizza anyway.

And now if you think I am done talking about takeaway food Down Under, you are so wrong. I already had a 2-page post written up before last night, which I will post soon. But to give you a break from food I’ll provide a short anecdote from last weekend, entitled “The American on the Bus”:
Last Saturday I was getting on the bus with my flatmates. The fare was $1.50, I paid $2 and then walked down the bus, forgetting to get my change. I dashed back as soon as I noticed and the bus driver looked at me and then said to Tams, “she’s crazy!” In way of explanation, Tams told him I was American. I was now walking off, but the bus driver said something to Tams. When we sat down I asked what he had said. “I’m not sure… maybe ‘no problem!’” Daniel, who had been behind her, swiftly corrected her, “oh no. He said, ‘we don’t want the Bomb here!’”
I may never live that one down.
Good night.

Six Months Later

I have been away from home, and thus out of the US, for exactly six months today.
Apart from the whole does-it-feel-like-longer-or-shorter conundrum, this had made me think a bit. More specifically, it has made me think about how my perspective might have changed in that time.
Basically, a few weeks ago I was comparing something in New Zealand to America (as I often do), and a friend stopped me and asked “but couldn’t your perspective be messed up because you’ve been away for so long?” I answered hurriedly (perhaps a bit too hurriedly), “no, absolutely not.”
But then I went to Auckland last weekend. The first thing I noticed was just the slightest hint of humidity in the air. I was instantly worried. Wellington, for the record, doesn’t really get humid at all, probably because it’s always windy or something. And I knew in the back of my head that this really wasn’t humid at all. Not even registering on the humidity scale compared to summers in New York or any time in Hong Kong. But I noticed it anyway. When I mentioned it to Tams, she said “and did you notice how there are SO MANY PEOPLE?” Auckland is by far the biggest city in New Zealand, with a third of the country’s population living in the Auckland area. (Or at least I heard something along those lines once, and so am going to repeat it here.) I thought about this for about a nanosecond, and realized that I had thought that. Uh oh. I had gotten off the bus and the streets had seemed rather crowded. And busy. New Zealand has fewer people in the entire country that New York City does in its five boroughs. I was starting to get seriously scared.
So obviously, my perspective has changed in some ways. I’ve gotten used to different weather and having fewer people around. That’s not too surprising when you think about it, but it made me wonder if it had changed my outlook on other things. Can I really comment anymore on the prevalence of beets in America versus in New Zealand? What if I just can’t remember? Worrying stuff. Add to that the fact that I haven’t actually been in America since the financial crisis truly started or Obama was elected, and I suddenly start to feel very out of touch with American culture. A couple of weeks ago everybody on twitter started talking about a press conference Obama was giving. People never actually watched and listened to these things when I lived in America! Maybe things really have changed!
Honestly, I know I’m not that out of touch. I can remember what I normally eat at home, what the weather is like and what it feels like to be squished into a subway car with a hundred other people. I read enough American blogs and have enough contacts with America that I have some idea what the atmosphere is like over there at the moment, but I guess I can never be sure until I get home.
Which will be actually quite soon. Six months down, two to go!
(Picture: A view of Auckland from some hill lookout thing. Notice it is not actually that massive.)

My Sunday in pictures

Here are some pictures, at last. http://tinyurl.com/cxrnme
Click through and read the captions to hear about our (less-than) exciting Sunday.

Potato paTAHto; Tomato tomAHTo

When you’re living with people from a different place than you, no matter for how long, you continue to find differences in accent or culture that provide constant fodder for laughs, teasing, and general conversation. The thing is, I find that I never notice things about my own culture (in this case I’m talking American, or perhaps more accurately northeast suburbia American) until I’m somewhere else and living among people from different backgrounds. Some things I just assume are the same everywhere. I mean, everybody knows that the seasons are opposite in the southern hemisphere, but I had no idea that Australia and New Zealand mark changes on the first of the season rather than the equinoxes (making today the first day of fall). This doesn’t make any sense whatsoever to me, but I guess it’s just one of those differences I have to accept.

Another difference is the Australian (and New Zealand, to a lesser degree) love of beetroot. They both loving putting beets on their burgers, and Australians frequently try to dump canned beets on your plate as a vegetable. I do not tolerate this nonsense. Maybe I’m a totally weird American, but I distinctly remember the first time I was confronted with beets (outside of the cartoon Doug, of course). It was in England I was maybe twelve. I tried to tell my friends the other night that we didn’t really eat beets in America, which was met with (somewhat feigned) incredulity. They then spent half an hour trying to convince me that Americans actually LOVE beets, meaning New Zealanders can’t import enough of them because we are always stealing them. When this tactic failed, I was asked which “vegetable-hating state” I was from, again? Well apparently New Yorkers are famous for their hatred of beets. Everybody else loves them. News to me! (And, to get back to my actual point, perhaps a bit of proof that sometimes it’s hard to believe that things you grew up with aren’t the same everywhere, even if they were mostly just teasing me.)

Of course I’m usually coming up with these differences all the time, but now it gets time to writing them down I’m forgetting them all. One thing I find particularly offensive is the profusion of a substance known as “tomato sauce.” You might think (and people try to tell me) that this is pretty much identical to ketchup. False. Tomato sauce is considerably runnier and sweeter than ketchup. On the few occasions when I am dragged into McDonalds (which, of course, is supposed to be my Mecca), I relent only when I realize that this is an opportunity to get REAL ketchup, none of that sauce stuff. That difference is one of the things that I really wonder at—how did the change from ketchup to tomato sauce occur, and why is one more popular in America and one more popular over here? Or did they evolve separately? Frankly, it baffles me.
While I’m on the subject of cultural differences, I think I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the differences between New Zealand and Australia. If you’ve watched Flight of the Conchords you may have seen the episode in which Bret and Jemaine, the main characters, are discriminated against for being New Zealanders. At the end of the episode, however, it is revealed that in fact the “racist” man in question had thought they were Australians, and had no problem with New Zealand. This is a common mistake, of course. People mix up Australia and New Zealand all the time, much to the chagrin of the citizens of both countries, who regard each other with contempt. When I told a cattle rancher in Australia that I was going to New Zealand, he replied promptly that there were only three things I needed to know about New Zealanders: “over paid, over sexed, and over here.” (I did read yesterday that the number of New Zealanders leaving for Australia is almost 1,000 a week, in a country of only 6 million people. Pretty staggering.) People often compare the two countries to America and Canada, but it’s quite a different relationship, with many more differences in culture and accent. The one I found most amusing when I was over here with both my New Zealand friend Tams and Australian friend Lily was the different way the two countries treat possums. In Australia, they are a native animal and somewhat endangered, and are thus revered. People stop their cars if a possum is crossing in front of them. In New Zealand, however, possums were introduced (by those bloody Australians, of course) and endanger native birds, which are largely flightless due to the lack of native predators in New Zealand. Possums are therefore widely reviled, and cars frequently swerve out of their ways to hit them. This may seem like a simple difference of geography, but hearing people from the two countries talking about it made me realise that the different reactions highlight real differences in mindset that the two countries have.

My second to last example (I apparently make up in quantity of examples by the length of my discourse on each one) is the proliferation of things like pre-made cookie dough, frosting, cake mixes, etc in America. We always hear that Americans have so many products designed for convenience rather than health, price, or taste, but I didn’t realize how much this was true until I started craving some good old-fashioned break-and-bake cookies. I hope most Americans know what I’m talking about, and realise why I crave them, but for anyone who doesn’t, this is basically refrigerated cookie dough that you can buy in a variety of flavours in a block with score lines. You simple have to break the pieces apart and put them on a baking sheet in the oven to get “home-made” cookies. I explained this to New Zealanders and they all looked aghast. If you wanted homemade cookies why not just make them yourself? If you didn’t, why not just buy them? What, in short, was the point? Clearly they don’t realize how delicious this dough is raw (let’s face it, we all sneak at least a few cookies’ worth of dough away before baking), or how nice it can be to eat cookies right out of the oven without the hassle of… well, doing almost anything. Plus, they’re delicious. The same is true with pre-made frosting. It’s just better than what I can make with stuff that’s usually in my cupboard. But if you didn’t grow up with these products (and this is probably a generational difference as well as cultural), it just seems bizarre. I’m still being teased that the thing I miss most about America right now is cookie dough.

And then there are, of course, the more “important” or “serious” differences. Don’t get me wrong, these interest me as well, but I’m not as good at writing about them (or perhaps I should just try another day). One example of these is what New Zealanders call “tall poppy” syndrome. Apparently Americans are much more used to talking themselves up then New Zealanders… it’s true, we do have a propensity to brag, and certainly talk of our own achievements. If a New Zealander dares to say that she has done such-and-such and is thus awesome, she’ll quickly be cut down by anyone listening. It’s just not done. Gun laws and our history of slavery are other subjects that I’m mocked about frequently… I’ve never been proud of our ability to carry guns and our history of slavery, but I had never before thought of how people without those laws and that history viewed Americans because of them. Oh, and apparently they can’t sue people for every little thing here. Weird.

Anyway, those are just some differences I’ve been thinking about recently. I’m sure I’ll think of more soon, but I think this post is PLENTLY long enough. Stay tuned for a picture diary of my Sunday coming soon!

Botanical Musings

The way I see it there are three speeds of travel. Speed 1 is what I did over the (northern) summer* in Europe. We had eight major stops in 3 ½ weeks, meaning we spent 1-3 nights in each place. That’s pretty super sonic. This was really good in some ways, though, because it meant we rushed around and tried to see as much as we could. With the exception of our stops in Switzerland and Hamburg, we pretty much didn’t have downtime. We knew our time was limited, and we wanted to take advantage of every minute.
Speed 2 is slightly slower, and usually involves a lot fewer places. I think this is the most typical travel speed… most family vacations involve going somewhere for one to two weeks, with maybe one other stop or side trip. This speed is pretty good too, though in can be bad for the cultural sights mentality. I mean, if you have two weeks, you don’t rush to see every museum right away and (I find) this sometimes means that you realize on your last day you haven’t seen nearly everything that you planned to. But it is good for relaxing and for absorbing the atmosphere of a place.
Which brings me to Speed 3, aka move to a country for a few months and see what it’s all about. Guess what speed I’m on right now? And I have found some entirely dorky reasons to love it.
Now, of course, there’s the obvious, ie you get to see how people Really Live. For example, through extended observation I have determined that New Zealanders don’t believe in wearing shoes (ok, I actually discovered this on my first day here. But I have CONTINUED to discover it), they eat out of bowls much more often than other people (this could just be my flatmates), and they say things like “gutted,” “average,” and “yus.” (I have worryingly started to pick up on some of these expressions.) I noticed things like this in Australia as well—their slang especially took some time to pick up.
But the dorkiest thing ever that I have noticed through staying in one place for a long time is... the change in the flora.
Now. I should first point out that New Zealanders are really obsessed with their plants. Australians are too, but to a slightly lesser degree. More specifically, New Zealanders are obsessed with what is “native” and what is not… ie what was originally on these tiny islands and what the Evil Europeans (or the Maoris, less frequently) brought with them. I am constantly being instructed that I can’t look at certain plants because they’re “not native.” For example, my flat is on a hill, and when I walk out on a particularly nice day I look over at the surrounding hills and comment on their beauty. If I’m with Tamsin, I’m swiftly chided because those hills are covered with pine trees, which are not native and thus could not possibly by pretty. I am often questioned on what is native in America, and they never seem to accept the answer that I don’t know, or really care. They take nativeness really seriously here.
Anyway, of the plants that I am allowed to look at, I have noticed recently some awesome changes as the months progress. Now, to northerners this probably seems pretty obvious—duh, plants change when it gets to fall. But in the southern hemisphere that isn’t so true. In Australia, for example, the eucalypts that make up a lot of the flora don’t lose their leaves all at one time—they lose some leaves all year round, and shed their bark to get rid of waste. This means that you wouldn’t notice much of a difference if you were to visit for a week in August and then a week in December. New Zealand is the same in some respects… actually here I could be totally making things up, but I am pretty sure they don’t have deciduous trees. So you need to be here for a while to observe the small changes that do occur through the seasons. FOR EXAMPLE, when I first got to New Zealand it was December, and the Pohutakawa trees (also known as New Zealand Christmas trees) were beginning to blossom. They have beautiful red flowers and green leaves, and they flower through December and into January. So when I came back I was able to observe them some more, and then got really depressed as I started walking through carpets of red petals… there is now hardly a Pohutakawa blossom to be seen. Also, a few weeks ago I went up to a tree in our garden and saw these weird green pods. Now they’re orange! And falling off the trees! The same thing happened with purple flowers in Australia! It’s all pretty exciting, and is making me realize what’s nice about being in one spot for a prolonged period of time.
So I just realized that the rest of the post was probably far more interesting than the actual point of the post, and that this is way too long, but there you go. My dad was begging for a blog, so a blog he will get.

*Now that it is nearing the end of summer here, it has become even more difficult to say I did things during certain seasons. I mean, when I first got here I could say “over the summer…” and people would understand me, but now they won’t know which summer I’m talking about! Confusing.

Beat This

I am in Wellington. I am bad at blogging. Moving on...

Central Park is, of course, very nice. On one of my last days in New York I walked through part of it, near the reservoir. Though it was late summer, everything was still green and beautiful. The sun was out. There were lots of people lying in the sun or jogging or whatever. You could see skyscrapers peeking over the tops of the trees, which is always one of my favourite things about Central Park-- you can easily imagine you are in the middle of... well, not the country, but a not-quite-city, but then you look up and remember you're in New York. It's pretty awesome.

Also good is the Sydney Botanical garden. It goes right up to the Opera House, and I'm pretty sure you can see the Harbour Bridge from parts of it (one of my favourite things about Sydney is you can see its landmarks-- Opera House, Harbour Bridge, from a lot of places in the city, not just when you're right next to them). There are many plants and trees labeled for your botanic education (which I am planning a blog post on soon), and some of the trees have infestations of flying foxes, which is apparently a bad thing but is pretty cool when you look up and see all these bat-like things in the trees. I mean, provided the stay in the trees. I would not like those to come swooping down on me. Anyway, good garden. In a city. Sweet as. (I am so down with the antipodean lingo)

Even Hong Kong park is pretty nice. It's always fun to walk through on a Saturday and play count-the-wedding-parties... I'm sure everyone in Hong Kong must have the same exact wedding photos. It has an awesome aviary (when it's not closed because of bird flu), and the extra bonus of having an escalator that goes from the park DIRECTLY into a mall. Only in Hong Kong.

But...
On a clear, sunny, crisp day like today, I challenge you to find a city garden/park nicer than the Wellington Botanical Garden. I just went for maybe a half hour walk in it, and it was gorgeous. There are bits that are dark and shady and you don't see or hear anyone else, and bits of open meadow where lots of people (though, you know, in New Zealand "lots of people" is a relative term) are lying out. There is a beautiful rose garden where you can sit and have a cup of coffee and a pretty good lunch, and there are bits of seemingly uncultivated wood with only the slightest path through them. You have to walk up and down hills the entire time, meaning you get some stunning vistas of Wellington harbour and houses nestled on hillsides. As much as I like seeing the skyscrapers from Central Park, it is pretty nice to know that I'm only just outside the centre of Wellington and yet it's all houses, not apartment blocks, and most of what I see is green. And then-- bonus!-- I can walk out the top and either take the cable car down into the middle of the city, or walk five minutes to my flat. Bliss.
The only way I think it could be improved is by having slightly better signage near the Magpie Lawn. I got a bit lost.
I didn't take any pictures today, when I saw the nicest bits I've seen so far, but here's a picture from the top, where the Cable Car comes out, just to give a bit of a feel.

Clearing up misconceptions

When you hear about Australia, you hear about how it is always sunny and hot and everyone spends all their time surfing.
False.
Well, when I first got to Brisbane it was gorgeous most of the time-- there were so many days when it was just perfect out and nobody even mentioned it because it was just normal. But a few weeks after I left they had a series of terrible storms that killed two people, so clearly it's not always perfect. And while I was there we had a freak hailstorm.
The Northern Territory was hot and sunny, but then... that doesn't count.
Sydney, on the other hand. Sydney has been odd. We'll have some really hot and perfect days where it's perfect for the beach, but I'm always working those days. Every single weekend I've been here it has been cool, cloudy and/or rainy, and basically un-Australian. Last night we had another hail storm. Apparently this is really unusual and it should be warm by now and blah dee blah.
Basically I've decided that the Australia weather is a myth. Sorry to break it to you.

Musings on Christmas

I really am sorry at how terrible I am at this. But here's a post for you.

I’m a big fan of Christmas. A really big fan. I mean, I go to Starbucks just for the Christmas cups, and I started listening to Christmas music weeks ago. I bought a soap from Lush today that they only have over Christmastime, and it made me irrationally happy.
I am also a really big fan of Christmas in New York. The tree at Rockefeller centre, the windows at Saks and doing Christmas shopping on 5th avenue—they’re all perfect for getting me in the Christmas mood.
So naturally, I was a little apprehensive about having Christmas in Australia. Not only will it be hot*, but I just didn’t know how well Australians would do Christmas.
So far, I’ve been pleasantly surprised. Sure, they started a little early (with no Halloween or Thanksgiving in the way, decorations were making their way up in October), but I can’t deny that I definitely feel the Christmas spirit. In the QVB (Queen Victoria Building), a gorgeous mall in the centre of Sydney, there’s a Christmas tree that extends up through every floor, covered in Swarovski crystals. Definitely Christmasy.
But some new decorations appeared a week or two ago, and with these I take a bit of an issue. They are flag/banner things that hang from most street lamps throughout Sydney. They’re bright, colourful, and remind me every time I walk outside that Christmas is coming. So what kind of issue could I have with them?
I’ll tell you.
When I think of Christmas animals, the first thing that comes to mind is a reindeer. After that, I guess sheep and cows, judging by traditional pageants, and a lobster, judging by the pageant in Love, Actually.
So why, Sydney, why do two of the four banners feature a cockatoo and what I assume to be a possum??
I know Australians have some weird traditions, but I’m fairly certain Santa doesn’t use a cockatoo to power his sleigh here. I just don’t get it. Sure, it’s a cool design—the white and yellow cockatoo is very pretty against a red background. But the words “Happy Christmas” next to it just confuse me.
So every time I walk out of my hostel, I see a banner and I do think “Great, Christmas is coming!” But then I tend to spend the rest of my commute to work wondering what on earth a cockatoo has to do with it.

*Supposedly. After the freezing morning I’ve had today, I’ll believe it when I see it.

Six Days in the Desert

(technically I was never actually in the desert, but it sure felt like it)
So. I haven't blogged in a while. The first reason for this is that I didn't have anything to say for a while, and the second reason is the subject of this post-- I was in the internet-less, cell phone-less world that is the Northern Territory for six days. I was meant to be leaving Brisbane for Sydney on a Monday, but that Wednesday I suddenly decided that it would be fun to take a trip first... so I did a bit of research and discovered an awesome 6 day tour from Alice Springs to Darwin, including Uluru (Ayer's Rock). Well, I acted on a whim and booked it, so that Sunday I was flying off to Alice Springs. I had the afternoon in the town, which is small and very very hot, and then the adventure began... this time I actually can go by days because I kept a diary!
Day 1: 27/10/08
I woke up at 5:30 am, and for the first time ever in a hostel was not the only one doing it-- indeed, I seemed to have slept in a bit. Everyone was leaving on Uluru tours, which means everyone was up early. My tour guide picked us up from outside my hostel, and we were off on the drive to Uluru-- many people think it is just outside Alice Springs, but it is in fact another few hundred kilometres-- about four or five hours, with stops for fuel etc. The people on the tour with me were a massive range-- a lot of Japanese, some French and French Canadians, some Brits, some Italians, and only one Australian (who was with her British boyfriend). It seems Uluru remains a tourist attraction more for foreigners than Australians. Our stops included one at a camel farm-- camels were introduced to Australia and there are now more than a million wild ones in the country, as well as some in farms. We drove on to our campsite near Uluru-- there are many sites with permanent tents and kitchens, though I chose to sleep outside under the stars. After lunch there we went to the Uluru cultural centre. Apart from learning about the importance of Uluru to the aboriginal people, the most interesting part of this was the "sorry" letters, written by people who took rocks from Uluru home with them and were now sending them back-- according to tradition, you will be cursed if you take rocks, and some letters included stories of disasters in the family after taking the rocsks. We then had a walk around Kata Tjuta (formerly the Olgas), very old mountains that were formed the same time as Uluru. We couldn't go very far though, due to the intense heat. We returned to a lookout point to watch the famous sunset over Uluru, along with hundreds of other tourists-- our tour guide termed it "the circus." Dinner that night was truly Australian-- steak and kangaroo on the barbie. Kangaroo was suprisingly delicious, not dissimilar to beef. Had a good night talking and getting to know everyone.

Day 2- 28/10/08
The second day dawned even earlier-- we woke up at 4 am, when you could still see the stars shining bright above, so that we could get to Uluru and start walking around it by sunrise. You are still allowed to climb it, but the Aborigine owners ask you not to because it is very sacred to them, so I walked around, which was still marvellous. Watching the rock change colours as the sun came up was gorgeous (I have tons of pictures but unfortunately can't put them up right now). Being so close you could see the indentations and caves much more clearly than at a distance, and could walk into some caves to see paintings on the walls. We finished the walk at 9:30 but by then it felt like midday, for the sun was out in full force. We packed up and started our drive to King's Canyon, stopping on the way for lunch and an expedition into the desert to gather firewood. The cool nights and mornings kept making me forget how hot it could really get! The red sand practically burned you if you touched it. We had a welcome break at a "resort" by King's Canyon, with a pool and a few stores-- a swim was very refreshing, and we had some time to relax which was good. That night we were on a smaller campsite with fewer people around, which was nice. We made a huge bonfire and I had a great time teaching the Japanese and Italian people how to roast marshamllows-- the only thing missing was the chocolate and graham crackers! Many of them had never roasted marshmallows before, and we had to show them how to put it on the stick and everything... it was really fun watching their excitement.

Day 3- 29/10/08
We were up at four AGAIN to walk around the rim of King's Canyon... the first bit is a brutal uphill climb, so it was good to be doing it before the sun was up, and thankfully the day was cloudy so most of the walk was quite pleasant, with stunning views of the canyon. Then we got back on the bus to head back to Alice, with only a few stops for fuel and lunch. We got back around 4-- staying in hostels that night as offically the first tour had ended and the next began the the next day. Air conditioning and internet were welcome, as was a proper bed.

Thus ended the first three-day tour and began the next one! Many of the people were the same on both tours, though we lost the English guys and gained a lovely couple from Northern Ireland, as well as a different tour guide. In general the second half was much more "cruise-y," as our guide kept saying. Instead of getting to certain thigns and certain times it was essentially a road trip with interesting things along the way, and I really enjoyed it.
Day 4 30/10/08
We got picked up at 5:40 and started going north on the Stuart Highway, which we would follow all the way to Darwin. We quickly passed the Tropic of Capricorn, and saw an old telegraph station which is the reason many of the towns were built. Much of this trip was characterized by stops at tiny towns consisting mainly of a gas station. The major attraction of the day were the Devil's Marbles, massive boulders balanced on top of each other in quite a large area. They are really quite spectacular, though it was difficult to fully appreciate them because it was probably the hottest day yet-- in the high 30s celcius, and we all wanted to get back on the air conditioned bus! We saw another telegraph station... it is very difficult to imagine the lives those telegraph operators left, literally in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Incredibly isolated. We got to our campsite pretty early, and it was lovely-- a cattle station at which we were the only tourists. Goats and cows wandered around freely, and our kitchen porch abutted a kangaroo paddock, where we could watch the kangaroos graze, including one that had a joey in its pouch! We spent the night out on the porch eating dinner and just chatting-- it was a wonderful group of people, all of whom had been in Australia for varying lengths of time and were doing all sorts of exciting things. Nobody seems to come to Australia for a few weeks, it's always months! I was made to practice my French a bit with the Quebecois couple and French girl, who wanted to see how good I was... they claimed to be impressed! I slept inside that night to avoid the goats.

Day 5- 31/10/08
Halloween! Beyond saying "oh, it's Halloween," we didn't really celebrate, but it was a great day nonetheless. We had a late(r) start (6:30), because the day was mostly driving. But I finally discovered that I could actually read on the bus without getting sick, so got well into Pride and Prejudice. The only (non)event of the morning was a stop at a town called Elliott, which I found quite amusing. I believe the population was something like 30 "whitefellas," the rest Aborigines. Our lunch stop was very memorable-- it was in the town of Daly Waters, which is very small, but included Daly Waters pub, which was become something of a tourist attraction. It's a great place with lots of character-- people leave items pinned to the walls everywhere, and there's lots of tchotkes. We had a long and relaxing lunch before hitting the road again. The afternoon stop was at a thermal springs-- this was a stunning place, because we turned down a road and all of a sudden the arid landscape and been transformed to rainforest with lush palm trees everywhere. The springs themselves were gorgeous, and very warm, though still refreshing. We had a brief stop in Katherine before getting to our next campsite, where we spent another great evening talking.

Day 6- 1/11/08
Our last day, and just as good as all the others! We left early to get to Katherine gorge, where we did a short hike to get an aeriel view of the gorge, and then were left to our own devices for a few hours. I opted to kayak (some people took a boat down the gorge), which was very peaceful and fun. We were able to beach our kayaks and swim every now and then, though not on the many beaches were crocodiles were nesting! (apparently they were freshwater, and thus non-aggressive, crocodiles)
After leaving the gorge we stopped at Edith Falls for lunch, a pretty lake, and then pressed on to Darwin. I fell asleep on the bus and when I woke up was astounded to see termite mounds suddenly looming over us-- they had been getting steadily bigger the whole way north, but were suddenly massive. Quite something to see. We got into Darwin in the evening and had a nice last night together as a group... some people were going on to Kakadu, while others were finishing there (as I was)

The next day I pottered around Darwin... it was too hot, and I was too lazy, to get up to much. It's quite a small city, though pretty and on the water, but I wasn't sad to be leaving the next morning. Altogether it was a wonderful trip, I really feel like I saw Australia, and I met some amazing people.
And there you go... I commend you if you got through all that. If anyone is interested in a similar trip, I did mine through Adventure Tours Australia and would recommend it!

I'm now in Sydney, which I'm sure I will post about shortly...

Canberra!

I just had a very good week which reminded me why I started a blog, because I don't want to forget about it! I was down in Canberra (Australia's capital) for the week, working in the MP's office. I think I'll just do a day-by-day kind of thing cause I did a lot:
I arrived on Sunday, so I had the day to explore Canberra. They didn't have my bag at the airport (of course), so I got to my hostel sans luggage and went right back out to find The Australian War Memorial, which was really cool-- it's up a long street called Anzac something with lots of memorials lining it, finishing in a big memorial/museum thing. (I'm going to post a bunch of pictures later when I can actually be bothered). Anyway, that was cool, and the weather was perfect for sitting in the shade and reading, and also for walking around, so I saw quite a bit of the city, which is very pretty but also very quiet-- I was literally about a minute out of the main shopping district when I was walking among very suburban-looking houses.
On Monday I caught the bus over to Parliament house, and basically spent the morning being given a tour by my coworker all around-- I went in the government and opposition meeting rooms, sat where the Prime Minister sits, saw the House and Senate, went up on top of the building where there's a big flagpole, lurked in a corridor till the PM walked by surrounded by his posse... I seriously think I saw most of the building, and it is HUGE. All the offices for the Senators and Reps are in there, so it's pretty spacious.
Ok I lied about the day-by-day thing because I can't really remember what happened when.
BUT some highlights were sitting in the gallery for Question Time-- I had a very good view and was sitting right behind some Sri Lankan minister who was visiting, sitting in the actual CHAMBER (In the adviser's box) while the House was in session... apparently hardly anyone gets to do that. I also got to go up to Main Committee (where they send things that aren't as important) while the MP gave a speech I wrote!! It was on the 6th anniversary of the Bali Bombings, so not some important policy issue, but it was still really cool to see it in the official Parliament records after :).
Umm what else. Oh, because Michael Johnson's the Opposition Whip, we had to do some calling of other reps to get them in the chamber. This was always amusing cause we had to flick through all the channels on Parliamentary TV to try and see who was already in there, and then we'd be about to dial someone and a staff member would shout "No! Russell's just walked in! It's ok!" It was funny to me cause we were literally right across the hall from the chamber, but we couldn't look in to see who was there so we had to squint at the tv.
On a more serious note, I did learn a lot about Australian government, which really interested me. I hadn't so fully grasped before the way they vote as parties-- if your party supports a bill, you vote for it. If they don't, you vote against it. No exceptions. It made all the speeches and stuff seem pretty pointless, because the government was always going to get their way... I prefer the American system in which individuals can make choices depending on (hopefully) what they think is best for their constituents, even if that goes against the party lines.
Also, the food in the cafeteria was really good. And cheap!

Anyway, yeah, I think that's it. I will post pictures later. It was basically a lot of fun and very interesting... being able to open the paper yesterday and see them talking about stuff I was watching live (sometimes in person, sometimes on TV) was really cool. More later!

Oh no wait. I forgot about Friday! They only work Monday-Thursday in Parliament, so I had all of Friday to hang out before my flight. I walked across the lake (that kind of divides Canberra) to Questacon, a really cool science museum-thing. That was fun. Then I walked over to Old Parliament House, where Parliament sat in the 1920s-80s before Australia got too big and there were too many Members to hold them. It was really interesting to get a tour of that, and see how it's all changed... though the tour guide kept explaining things "for our American visitor" and I had to refrain from telling him that I actually did know what the House of Representatives did, having worked there all week. Ah well. There was also a really good photo exhibition called "Beyond All Reasonable Drought" with pictures of parts of Australia which are so badly effected by the current drought... definitely eye-opening.
And then my bag got lost on the way home too. But it's arrived now!
Ok, that is it this time.

A little late...

Well, after nearly 2 1/2 weeks in Australia I've finally got around to setting up a blog! The reason for the delay is mainly laziness, and the catalyst for finally doing it was I heard something on the radio today that I didn't want to forget, and I'm rubbish at keeping a diary. Basically, I was listening to the radio in the car and a man phoned in, sounding remarkably happy. The host said "you're sounding cheery!" and the man said "Well, I woke up alive this morning, so I'm already ahead!." This just seemed to me such a good example of what I've experienced in Australia so far-- people are nice, they're friendly, they remember your name and are interested in hearing about you. The person who you're buying a ticket from at the station calls you "mate." My friend Lily, who I'm staying with here in Brisbane, keeps telling me that I shouldn't sound so surprised when people are nice, but I am, because it's so different from what I'm used to. (not that that's bad, by the way-- the niceness kind of freaks me out, to be honest) Anyway, now that I've said that I should probably do a bit of an update as to what I've been doing in Australia.
As I said, I've been in Brisbane for 2 1/2 weeks, and the first 2 were purely holiday. Lily and I went to most parts of Brisbane, it seems-- scoped out some markets, went to two different comedy shows (Frank Woodley and Tripod, both hilarious. Australian comedy is wonderful), watched a lot of Gossip Girl (and West Wing, to be fair), and just had a relaxing time. We did some good Australian things as well, like going to Brisbane Forest Park and seeing all the Australian animals-- wombats, wallabies, snakes, and a platypus who we watched for about 15 minutes. Last weekend we went up to Toowoomba, where her relatives live, for a big party for her Uncle. It's only about an hour and a half outside of the fairly large city of Brisbane, but as soon as we were on the way it was suddenly farm country-- lots of cows and even an emu farm, which was kind of awesome. The party was also typically Australian (or so I'm told)-- a game of hide-and-seek involved the phrase "Don't hide there, that's where the cane toads and snakes are," and later in the evening (when quite a lot of alcohol had been consumed by some), some cousins embarked on a mission involving golf clubs and cane toads, justified by their being an "introduced species" and a "pest." (To be fair, again, they did examine one animal and, seeing it was a green frog, declared it a "good one.") There was also a massive bonfire and, the next morning, what looked like a full English breakfast except for the fact that it had been cooked entirely on the barbie (and lacked black pudding.)
Coming up to date, this Monday I started an internship at Michael Johnson's office. He's the federal member of Parliament for the district of Ryan, which is made up of Brisbane's western suburbs. It's been very good so far (everyone is, of course, nice), and next week I'll be going down to Canberra because Parliament will be in session, so that should be good.
Anyway, sorry this is such a massive post, I didn't think I had quite so much to say. I'll try to update this semi-regularly.
Bye for now!