No TPS Reports Here

2/16/10: Sydney, Australia

“Nobody likes their boss. You must be the only person in the world who would want to meet up with their boss on the other side of the world… There must be something wrong with you.”
- the oh-so-wise Kevin Curry

You know how people talk about having a work spouse? I never had a work spouse (other than my roommate Naz, but women aren’t allowed to marry in North Carolina, so that doesn’t really count, even though we had a loving relationship), but I did have a work dad. And what does a work dad do, one might ask? Well, not to worry if you don’t know – I shall tell you. He makes sure you go to the gym at least three times a week, he forces you to eat FIVE, not three, not four and half, but FIVE, walnuts every day at 3pm, and he gives you the death stare if you even think about having a soda.

Meet Howie/my work dad/my old boss/the walnut martinet.

We met up with Howie for breakfast at Dov at Delectica, where I tried Vegemite for the first time, and then we leeched onto him for the next seven hours. We went to his parents’ house and met his parents (I like to think of them as Mr. and Mrs. Howie), and then we had lunch with his sister, his brother-in-law and their brand-new, super adorable baby. So basically, Howie flew 18 hours to the other side of the world to visit with his family, whom he only gets to see twice a year – and Kevin and I crashed the party. What can I say? We are loving, caring, considerate people.

Howie, who is almost as proud of us for going on this trip as my real dad is, keeps up with our blog every day. And since he asked me not to mention how he made us go with him to T Bar so he could buy some t-shirts (“Hey – you won’t write on your blog, ‘and then he took us to the t-shirt store and we looked at t-shirts for half an hour…’ will you?”), I won’t mention that at all.

Hey Howie, thanks for breakfast! And lunch! And for showing us around! And for offering to buy me that t-shirt! I would have accepted only Kevin’s started complaining about how we have too much stuff – all ten pounds of it.

We eventually tore ourselves away from Howie so we could catch a harbor cruise with Captain Cook Cruises. If we didn’t go on the cruise, we would probably have tagged along to Howie’s family dinner, and then invited ourselves to stay the night at Howie’s parents’ house, and I think that would probably have been overstaying our welcome just a tad, so it’s probably just as well we went on the cruise.

What is everyone else looking at? Am I missing something?

This game is called Spot the Opera House.

After the cruise was over, we walked to our friendly neighborhood Coles, where we picked up some groceries for our last meal in Australia.

Sorry bub, but you're dead meat.

We had decided earlier that eating kangaroo steak at a restaurant would be a bit too pricey for us, but $3.97 for four kangaroo skewers? That’s in our budget! We cooked up the skewers alongside some onions and mushrooms and peppers, and this became our first self-catered meal that didn’t involve Shin Ramyun, pasta or sandwiches.

The verdict? Roo is yummy.
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Puzzles for Postcards

Hidden Baseball Hall of Famers (A slight twist this week – name all of the Baseball Hall of Famers included either forward or backward in the following. Hint: there are five, all of at least five letters in length.)

The Wall Street opening bell cracked, causing the need for a newer bell. “I keep one handy” the speaker said at the meeting to discuss the problem. “We can melt names onto it to copy the pattern of the original.” The banks all agreed, and the next morning the new bell was hoisted onto the old bench. Order was restored.
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Picture of the Day: We’ll be back, Sydney!

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Bonza Bonanza

2/15/10: Sydney, Australia

In Siem Reap, our overpriced bike rentals cost us each $1 per day. Those days feel like a lifetime ago. Today’s 4 hour rental and guided tour with Bonza Bike Tours: $178. (Don’t worry though – this price is in Aussie dollars, and given the strength of the good old USD these days, that’s only like $177.50.)

So what exactly makes up the $175.50 difference between a Cambodian bike rental and a Australian bike tour? Gather ’round and let me tell you today’s story.

Once upon a time (this morning), Zhou and I arrived at the Bonza Bike office in the oldest part of Sydney, affectionately called the Rocks. It was a beautiful summer morning, with a cool breeze winding through the ageless sandstone structures and my sorry excuse for a week old beard. It was while donning the shiny red Bonza Bike helmets that we realized Americans flock to Sydney as if it were a Hardee’s thickburger. In our 11-person tour, ten of us were gun-toting, straw-chewing, suspender-snapping, world-conquering descendants of George Washington.

Living up to all American stereotypes.

Our fearless leader for today’s “gander on wheels” around perhaps the most perfect city in the world was Adrian, a curly-haired native Sydneyster whose young face was hidden discretely behind his horrible attempt to rub in sunscreen. I immediately sensed that Adrian was the kind of person you’d trust leaving your kids with, as long as your kids were taking a four hour bike tour of Sydney.

Over the next few hours, we each had the time of our day pedaling around the lesser-traveled streets of the city, passing one amazing harbour view after another. We wound our way through Hyde Park, past the iconic Opera House, over the Harbour Bridge and under the thousands of mysteriously out-of-place bats inhabiting the Botanic Gardens. To grandmother’s house we go. We saw the house where Russell Crowe throws phones for most of the year, the institution that is Harry’s Cafe de Wheels (which Zhou and I have eaten at twice already), the creepily awkward Luna Park. We learned about how almost every non-Aboriginal Australian is a convict by blood and how the architect of the Opera House got so fed up with the Australian government that he never saw his completed work. We laughed, we cried and we made memories that will last a lifetime.

Under the bridge.

Over the bridge.

To the house.

Past the house.

As our tour came to an end under the increasingly scorching sunlight, I hopped off my 21-speed “adoption machine” (a term of endearment I gave the seat of my bike for its ability to eliminate any possibility of me ever having kids) and took my wife by the hand for the short walk to the library. (All good bike tours should end with relaxing amidst the musty smell of Australian books.) To paraphrase Dmitri Martin, we immediately reminisced through the 1.5 inch screen on the back of my Canon, and then we lived happily ever after.

PS – After we left the library, we witnessed a gorgeous sunset from the Opera House.

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Pictures of the Day: Color Accent orange works for every occasion.

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Will You Be My Valentine… For Only 59 Cents?

2/14/10: Sydney, Australia

To all guys who are on the fence about doing a round-the-world trip with your significant others: one of the nice features of such a trip is that it gets you out of Valentine’s Day. My proof? Last year on Valentine’s Day I bought Zhou a bunch of flowers, took her to a nice expensive restaurant, showered her with gifts such as stuffed animals and wrote her a card. This year? We ate hot dogs off a street vendor for lunch and cooked 59 cent pasta for dinner.

Although maybe if I’m really lucky, this is just how married Valentine’s Days are. Can anyone back me up here?

…

A couple of days ago Zhou and I were having a very serious conversation over buy-one-get-one-free $7 footlongs from Subway. I’ll pick up the conversation from as close to the beginning as possible.

Z: They probably don’t even know how long a foot is in some countries! I bet each Subway location takes the average length of its employees’ feet and calls that a footlong.
K: That’s discriminatory against large-footed people – what do you think Martin Luther King Jr. would think of that? I bet those countries have $7 meterlongs instead! We need to move abroad now.

Contemplative pause that slowly turns into a “Staring out the window into a stormy night” moment.

Z: So do you think we’ll be better people when we get home?
K: I’d like to think we will.
Z: How so?
K: I’ve actually been thinking about making a list of things I want to do differently after the trip.
Z: What kind of things?
K: Well, I want to play more guitar for one. And I’d like to buy less clothes. Oh, and I want to watch as many LeBron games as possible. I’ve come to appreciate that he’s definitely a once-in-a-lifetime play…
Z: You basically want to become a more extreme version of yourself!

It’s weird – I’ve never thought of it that way. But when you boil it all down, it’s very true. When you get away from your day-to-day lives for so long, you learn to appreciate the things you love the most and you want to focus more of your time on those. Zhou has realized what a luxury it is to be clean, and she’s also learned she can do without a lot of TV. Other than figuring out that I can get by on only three shirts, I’ve taken for granted how easy it is to exercise back home and also how convenient it is to buy milk.

Our conversation then turned from the things we’d like to do more of to what we’d like to become involved in. We both agree that we’re going to set aside a certain percentage of our income for charity, and we’re going to donate that to the two or three causes that matter to us the most. Zhou really wants to take part in a local fruit and vegetable co-op, where someone brings locally-grown food to your door every week. I would like to take up some form of yoga (but not the boring kind). And we are both going to work to stay on top of both national and international news.

I probably write about this topic more than you care to read, but I guess the overarching realization is that the longer we’re away from home, the more specifically we seem to filter what we want to do in life and how we think our time at home will be best spent. The obvious question is, will we remember this once we’ve settled in at home?
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Picture of the Day: This street artist actually paid the little kid $10 to jump over him. Then he begged the kid’s parents to give him $20 to cover his losses.

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A Day With Carry and Garol – I Mean Carol and Garry

2/13/10: Sydney, Australia

Back on our Acacia tour, we met a really cool Aussie couple that lives in Sydney, and their names were Carol and Garry (check them out on their blog). I don’t know what it is about their names, maybe it’s the “air” sound that they have in common, but it’s impossible to say “Carol and Garry” correctly more than 75% of the time. No, really, try it! It’s a scientific fact. Kevin and I have sort of a running competition going on who says their names correctly more of the time. “We should email Carry and Garol.” Pause. “You mean Garry and Carol.” “Yeah, that’s what I said.”

Our first stop was Harry’s Cafe de Wheels. We each got the Tiger Pie, Harry’s specialty. It’s basically a meat pie with a mushy peas/mashed potatoes hat all covered in gravy. After way too many meals of penne with store-bought pasta sauce, the Tiger Pie was pretty much my tummy’s version of heavenly goodness.

Take the picture already so I can get back to my meat pie!

Then they drove us over the Harbour Bridge to some lookout points on the north side of the city.

We could even fit the Harbour Bridge AND the Sydney Opera House into one picture!

It was nice getting a chance to hang out with locals, who could give us the scoop on all the things we had been wondering about since coming to Sydney. Like – why do none of the convenience stores near our hostel have prices on anything? (Not an Aussie-wide thing, Surry Hills phenomenon only.) In Australia, does one really say the phrase “heaps cut” to mean really disappointed? (Never heard anyone say it before, but would know what it meant if someone did say it.) Is that road really called “No Through Road?” (No, dummies, it just means the road is a dead end.) How come you guys pronounce Cairns Cans and Melbourne Melbun? (Because Aussies are weird. Ok, ok, they didn’t say that, we came to that conclusion ourselves.)

It was really cool to get a chance to catch up with them, but it was also kind of eerie, because the whole time we were all together I kept thinking that we were basically looking at ourselves in about six months (looking for new jobs, moving into a new place, planning on getting puppies). Luckily for us, they looked awesomely GREAT.

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Picture of the Day: Giant mushroom-like jellyfish that Garry spotted when we were walking on Finger Wharf.

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A Funicular Post

2/12/10: Sydney, Australia

I never thought I’d say this, but I hate Nepal.

Darn you and your amazing scenery.

Going to Nepal toward the beginning of our trip was like watching LeBron James play basketball and then going to coach your son’s fifth grade AAU team. It’s like dating the hottest girl in school and then settling for Icebox O’Shea.  It’s like vacationing to see your favorite aunt who gives you money and candy, only to return home and get your cheeks pinched by Aunt Mulva. In all cases there’s really nothing wrong with the latter (Aunt Mulva really is a nice person), but you’ve been so spoiled that nothing else will ever be the same.

Today we did a day trip to see the Blue Mountains, supposedly Australia’s second most popular tourist attraction behind Sydney. We had been praying for good weather ever since two of our roommates last week told us of the dense fog and heavy rain that not only derailed their chance at the picturesque views in the mountains, but also derailed the train they were taking back into Sydney. And despite having yet to experience a day without rain, the skies actually cleared up for us.

Looks pretty beautiful, huh? It really was, as soon as we stopped comparing it to scenery of certain past countries. There’s also an impressive variety of walks and climbs scattered throughout, but the best part of the entire day had to be the funicular train.

If you’ll remember back to Penang, we’ve already had one really bad experience with a funicular train. Usually one bad experience is enough to sour me on something for the rest of my life, so the funicular train should consider itself lucky that it got a second chance. (Oranges have not been so lucky. Neither has Spiderman 2, although that movie made me so angry that I will never ever watch another Spiderman, even if they get Denzel Washington to play Peter Parker and Jennifer Aniston to play the girlfriend what’s-her-name.) The big draw of the funicular train this time though was that at 52 degrees uphill, it is the world’s steepest funicular train. Even though I could have sworn Penang advertised the same funicular superlative, I’m a huge sucker for anything that claims to be the world’s anything-est.

[Side note: I've actually become such a big fan of the word “funicular” (now used seven times in this post), I got to thinking about other things that could really become more exciting simply by sticking the word funicular in front of them:

Funicular household chores
Lord of the Rings: Return of the Funicular King
Funicular board meetings
Five day funicular cricket matches

Obviously I still have no idea what funicular actually means.]

Anyway, whereas the Penang train didn’t actually seem all that steep because you stood on a floor that stayed flat, this ride actually seemed steeper than advertised. At the bottom of the hill the chair backs were almost parallel to the ground, so riders are effectively laying down before the ride starts. Before you know it though, you feel like you might fall off the front of your seat. Not only that, but the train reaches a top speed of 76 mph (ok, I made that up, but it was fast) and a quarter of the ride is through a pitch black tunnel. I’d highly recommend it.

You can tell from the look on Zhou's face that she wasn't having as much fun as me.

And Nepal, in case you’re reading, I didn’t mean that first sentence. It was simply for effect. I love Nepal.
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Picture of the Day: Our inner kids came out during lunch. Don’t I look like Dominique Dawes?

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