Shark schmark!

No bride-MOH shot is complete without some goofy poses

After months of counting down, my best friend Bridget is finally on her way to Sydney. She’ll be arriving for 10 days on Friday morning, and my only real concern is that I’ll wear her out before she can shake off the jet lag. In anticipation of this I’ve been sending her travel tips for months. Yup, I’m an over-planner.

Fortunately it’s looking like we’ll have great weather (75-80 degrees) for most of her stay, which is a big relief since it’s actually been pretty cloudy and cool the past week or so. We’re hoping to hit up Bondi or Bronte at least a couple times, though Beege has vowed she will stay out of the water due to this Monster Shark story that our friend Chelsie insisted on posting. I tried to point out that Brisbane is hundreds of miles from here, but I don’t think she’s convinced.

Allegedly a "monster shark" tore apart this already-sizeable great white off the coast of Brisbane

Other things on our agenda include:

-Hunter Valley Wine Tour (we’re doing a thing where a van picks you up in Sydney and drops you off at the end of the day. I don’t trust myself to drive up there sober, let alone with a few glasses of wine in my system).

-Day hike to the Three Sisters and Blue Mountain National Park

-Some sort of ridiculous hat situation to watch the Melbourne Cup, during which the entire country apparently comes to a stand-still.

-Visit to the Justice & Police Museum (Beege is the world’s biggest Law & Order fan and immediately requested this as soon as she read about it in her guidebook).

-Requisite walks through the Royal Botanic Gardens, the Domain, the Opera House, etc.

-Visit to Paddy’s Markets.

-And finally, climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I will not be participating in this outing (other than to take pictures from way far away), because I am deathly afraid of heights. But Beege and the hubs are both looking forward to it. Also, that ish is expensive yo! A$198 for a daytime “express climb”! When we got here that wouldn’t have been so bad, but now the Australian dollar is almost freaking equal to the US dollar (about 90 cents at the moment). Ugh.

If anyone out there has other must-visit suggestions, feel free to post them in the comments.

More than anything, I’m just so excited to have a good friend here to keep me company. Even when Bridget and I are just sitting around watching television (usually making snarky comments about whatever we’re watching), we tend to laugh our heads off. That’s something that I’ve greatly missed since moving here, and it’ll be great to finally be able to walk around and make jokes about silly Aussie things out loud, rather than just via my facebook status. Even if the weather gods don’t cooperate, I’m confident that we’ll still have a great time (but pray for great weather anyway!).

 

 

The Long and the Short of It

One of the most exciting – and scariest! – parts of moving to a new city is figuring out all your “people.” By “people,” I mean services like a tailor, a dry cleaner, a mechanic, a nail salon and, most crucially for girls, a hair stylist. Word of mouth can definitely be good, although with things like tailors and hair salons I find personal preference can vary widely (plus I still hardly know anyone in my immediate neighborhood, so word of mouth went out the window).

Usually I rely on a combination of extensive research on Yelp, walking around to see for myself how nice/sketchy a place looks, and recommendations from websites like Daily Candy. Of course there are bound to be some duds – maybe a particular stylist left, or prices got jacked up, or new management took over – but generally this formula has worked for me.

Unfortunately, there’s no Yelp and no Daily Candy here. I’m a pretty exhaustive researcher, and the best I could come up with was this Vogue Australia forum, which stretches back four years over 17 pages. Naturally I read all 17 pages, and came away with a few leads on local places, though of course half these salons don’t even have websites, and those that do offer little more than a phone number and street address. Thanks guys, that’s really helpful! Don’t worry about telling me prices, or what your salon looks like, or your stylists’ background, I’ll figure that out on my own. Ugh.

I took this photo with a just a hint of trepidation before entering

After combing the forum (ha! no pun intended) I settled upon Element Hair Salon in Woollahra. But then I went to their website and was so annoyed by its lack of useful information that, combined with the fact that it’s about a 25 minute walk away (still not too keen on driving), I uncharacteristically decided that I’d just go somewhere up the street instead. Both my parents and my husband are probably laughing at that, because I rarely settle for a hair stylist who’s affordable and convenient. Of course, we live on the edge of Darlinghurst, which is considered one of the most fashionable neighborhoods in Sydney and is also the heart of its gay community, so it’s not like there’s a dearth of hair places here, I just had very little information on any of them.

Every day when I walk up Victoria Street to go to the gym, I pass by this one little salon, Mu, that’s wedged in between two of the street’s many cafes. Seriously, they only have like half a doorway! I find this kind of cute and intriguing, and although the place is small, it’s chic in a minimalist sort of way, and nearly every time I walk by I seem to notice fashionable-looking people with great hair. So, in spite of their lackluster website, I called them up on a whim, got a price quote for a haircut, and made an appointment for the following day. When I informed the hubs, all he cared about was that it would cost half of what I paid in New York. (What can I say? Brandon at Frederic Fekkai is totally worth it. Funnily enough at my last haircut with him it transpired that he also cuts the hair of my husband’s co-worker who went to their firm’s Melbourne office when we came to Sydney. Of all the thousands of stylists in New York, it’s pretty crazy we went to the same one, no?)

So anyway, I arrived for my haircut with Amanda, who seeemed to be very Australian hipster with bleached blonde hair, sparkly black leggings, a cute vest, and cool accessories. That’s kind of the Victoria Street uniform. She was finishing up on another customer, but the salon’s owner (I think his full name is Maurice but Amanda called him Mu, hence the salon name) put down his sandwich and greeted me in a bubbly manner. During my appointment he discussed his excitement for an upcoming Liza Minelli concert (and what he would wear to said concert), and came over to offer his thoughts on Lady Gaga (“She’s just out there, doesn’t care what anyone thinks. But where are her pants?!”) when her picture appeared in a magazine I was reading. I LOVE that hair stylists are apparently the earth’s great constant, no matter where you are. I take great comfort in that, for some reason.

Amanda was a bit quieter but also super-friendly, chatting with me about local stuff and asking lots of questions about New York. Apparently she used to cut Hugh Jackman’s hair (and that of his wife) until they moved to NYC (apparently they love it there and she never wants to come back). This seemed like a very cool, unexpected tidbit, though I wonder if everyone just tosses out Aussie celebrity names to Americans figuring that’s all it takes to impress us. Is that too cyncial of me? (Not to say that I wasn’t impressed…)

Either way, Amanda did a great job. I’m happy with my haircut and the salon experience was very pleasant. They even brought me free coffee from the ever-popular Bar Coluzzi next door. They brought another woman a sandwich! I will confidently return to Mu next time I need my hair done, though if anyone out there has other recs for great “people,” please be sure to leave them in the comments. My next – and far more daunting- search is for a great waxer. I’ve got this list from Gridskipper Sydney as a starting point, but I’m yet to fnd anyone the world over who holds a candle to Carrie Maxwell at Habit in San Francisco. The quest continues…

Vindication!

Don’t call me a trendsetter or anything, but it looks like I’m not the only American who thinks Aussie Rules Football is kinda ridonk. I was enjoying my daily caffeine fix at Blip (damn they need a website already so I can link to them!) this morning when I noticed a giant picture of Charles Barkley on the cover of the Daily Telegraph’s sports section. I found this odd, since I hadn’t seen any headlines about him at ESPN.com or SI.com, plus it’s not even basketball season yet. And it’s not like they care that much about the NBA over here anyway. Hmmmm…

“CHARLES BARKLEY SPARKS CROSS-CODE FURORE” proclaimed the headline. Intrigued (and chuckling at the fact that this headline might as well be in Chinese for American sports fans), I turned to the inside cover to read on. Apparently Sir Charles was giving an interview on ESPN radio last weekend and somehow Aussie Rules Football came up.

“Why would anybody in the world want to play this sport?” he asked. “‘I don’t want to insult the Australians [but] I am like, ‘These guys are some damn idiots.’ Nobody plays football without pads every week for three, four or five months and don’t make any money.” He then continued: “At least in the NFL, you are going to kill yourself and … you get to be a millionaire after it’s over.”

Is it any wonder he was my favorite basketball player growing up? (Michael Jordan was way too boring and predictable for my taste.) Anyway, someone in Australia got ahold of these quotes this week and apparently there was a great uproar in Melbourne (as I learned last week, AFL fans can be very defensive). The Melbourne paper, The Age, even had a funny story about Sir Charles where they photoshopped him into a Geelong Cats uniform:

An AFL uniform looks goofy even on Charles Barkley (Photo from The Age)

I was totally cracking up at the story, although the Telegraph article revealed that it was all sort of much ado about nothing. Apparently Barkley got confused and was actually referring to Rugby League, since he attended a South Sydney Rabbitohs match earlier this year with their celebrity owner Russell Crowe. Of course, his point could apply to any version of rugby (btw that’s what the “code” in the headline means; rugby league, rugby union, and AFL are all different codes - essentially rules versions – of rugby at large).

Later in the interview he also mentioned that rugby is on television every freaking day here (great minds think alike, Sir Charles!).

The Neverending Weirdness of Watching Sports in Australia, Part II

There was no joy in Mudville, or Boston, or Sydney on Monday/Tuesday (Jim Davis/Boston Globe)

Yowza. When I woke up this morning I was certainly not expecting such a Word Press-erific day, but I’ll happily take the traffic and appreciate the encouraging comments from so many people out there! On to part deux of my sports-viewing discussion.

First of all,  for optimal American sports viewing it’s basically imperative that you get Foxtel. It’s kind of expensive and doesn’t hold a candle to DirecTV, but it’s the only way to get ESPN (Australian version, wonk wonk, meaning Premiership soccer when they could be showing football), three channels of FoxSports (generally disappointing) and One HD. I think One is available even without Foxtel, and it’s a good channel: it shows three NFL games/week (the two nationally-televised games plus one more randomly-selected Sunday game), college football, MLB, the NBA Playoffs and, according to its website, March Madness. Since it shows games live, though, you’ll want to have a DVR so you can record those 4 am East Coast afternoon games. Fox Sports also shows all of one game sometimes (how generous of them, especially since there are three freaking Fox Sports channels).

One seems to show about two college games per week (typically Big Ten or Pac-10 from ABC and an SEC game from CBS), and when we’re lucky ESPN HD and ESPN-normal show two different games. Thus far, my husband’s been able to watch his favorite team (Ohio State) play twice, I’ve seen Michigan once, and Cal is yet to appear. Of course, Cal has blown its two super-huge games (vs. Oregon and USC, ugh) so I guess I didn’t miss much. The ABC primetime Saturday night game always airs (that’s become our new Sunday morning ritual, which is hard to get used to), so as the season goes on you can rest assured that the most high-profile game will probably be watchable.

I’ve lucked out with the Patriots thus far, as they played the opening Monday night game to start the season, and One has shown two of their afternoon games (one of which was vs. the Jets, and almost caused me to throw objects at the TV). Rex Ryan may have replaced Don Zimmer as the fat New York coach I’d most like to roll off a cliff. When the Jets delightfully blew it against the Dolphins yesterday on MNF, my idol Bill Simmons tweeted that Ryan must have not used his timeouts because he ate them instead. “U can’t expect him to stand for that long w/o food,” he explained.

According to Bill Simmons, Rex Ryan literally ate his last two timeouts against the Dolphins on MNF (nydailynews.com photo)

Love it. Anyway, there are a couple options for catching your team when they’re not on TV here. The easiest is to buy a Game Pass subscription from NFL.com. As you can see, that ish is expensive ($209 for a “Follow Your Team” pass). And I thought I was financially dedicated when I bought a $2.50 can of PBR at George & Walt’s in Oakland every Sunday morning to watch the Pats on satellite. My solution for this week’s big game against Denver was to DVR the game on my parents’ Slingbox, then watch it later in the day. This was seemingly free, though of course the wonderful Internet rates are capped here so it cost us in our montly GB allowance. I never thought I would miss Comcast or even (gag!) Time Warner Cable so much.

To my initial delight (way back last week, in happier times), I discovered the MLB playoffs were being shown in their entirety, both live and in primetime replay, on both Fox-regular (NOT HD) and One HD. Even better, TBS had the broadcast rights to the divisional series, so I didn’t have to mute the TV to drown out the inane blather of godawful Fox announcers Joe Buck and Tim “they must call him Papi because of all the pop in his bat” McCarver. Although the Sox never seemed to really hit their stride this season (due mostly to pitching injuries and the sad decline of David Ortiz), they’ve always ALWAYS had the Angels’ number in the playoffs, so my hopes were high. The pitchers showed up (until Papelbon took the mound in game 3, anyway)– it was the Sox’ bats that went cold. All in all it was an incredibly frustrating series to watch, particularly from halfway around the world in a totally different time zone. There’s something about watching a night game when it’s daytime that just makes me feel particularly disconnected.

Of course, I’m partly to blame because I didn’t wear my #1 good luck shirt (it’s short sleeved and it was SOOOO unseasonably cold here last week that I could only wear my sweatshirt!). And then I mixed up my times and completely missed game 3 because I thought it was on after the hated yankee game. Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t be caught dead missing a Sox playoff game (work? psaw!), but again there’s something about being so far removed from the action that I managed to screw it up. But, much like with the Cal games, maybe it was for the best: The Sox took a 6-4 lead into the ninth inning, and were one out (and just one little strike!) away from ending the game on three separate occasions, but formerly-clutch (and ever-crazy) closer Jonathan Papelbon managed to give up a walk and three hits to let the Angels back into it.

Adding insult to injury, the Patriots lost to the Broncos in overtime shortly thereafter. They looked great in the first half (save for Tom Brady overthrowing Randy Moss on a surefire touchdown pass that he would’ve made ten times out of ten in 2007), and then Brady sucked it up in the second half. Personally I blame Gisele; he’s way too flash and Hollywood these days and dating back to the Super Bowl against the Giants his head just hasn’t been as in it. It was a rough day for Boston sports fans, who have unreasonably high expectations to begin with and have been so spoiled over the last decade. One of my favorite snarky sports blogs, Deadspin, had an admittedly funny post about the whole thing, mockingly referring to that depressing day as “Black Sunday.”

Tom Brady continues to break my heart on a weekly basis this season (Matthew J. Lee/Boston Globe)

On the bright side, at least I have something new to look forward to here: Cricket season. I’ll write a more in-depth post another time, but some of my newer readers may be surprised to hear that I actually quite like cricket, dating back to when I studied abroad in the UK in 2003. There is plenty of silliness about it, believe me, but it’s close enough to baseball (while also eccentrically different in certain ways) that I really enjoy it. And I love that it’s so popular all around the world (see my inexplicable love for Jamaica).

So here’s hoping the Patriots return with a vengeance, that the yankees get swept, that MLB umpires learn how to do their jobs, and that the Windies field a full-strength team for their upcoming Australian tour. If all that happens I can live with Black Sunday.

The Neverending Weirdness of Watching Sports in Australia, Part I

So far as I can, tell Melbourne winning the NRL championship is like Phoenix or Anaheim winning the Stanley Cup. It just ain’t right!                              (Photo: Melbournestorm.com.au)

*NOTE: Sigh, it’s just my luck that WordPress would decide to post my blog on its front page on the day when I make jokes about a sport that some Australians hold near and dear to their hearts. While I appreciate the increased traffic, I’m suddenly inundated with comments from strangers who are reading this way out of context and taking it WAY too personally (or, more accurately, taking it upon themselves to attack me personally). Here’s the deal: This is a blog about my experience as an expat in Australia. It’s how I see things here. It is not a serious evaluation of Australian sports vs. American sports, and by no means do I pretend to be an expert on any of the topics in question (other than television, of course). My typical audience is my friends, my family, other expats, and America’s Next Top Model fans (seriously, “Nigel Barker” continues to be the #1 search term that brings people here). Very few of them are familiar with Aussie Rules Football, or cricket, or Vegemite iSnack 2.0, or any other insitution that Australians may or may not treasure.

I’m very sarcastic and I like to make people laugh with my writing. I may not have a full grasp on the rules of AFL, but as I’ve hardly ever seen it since it’s not regularly televised in the U.S., I can’t help but observe that the rules feel very foreign and counterintuitive to someone used to American football. Furthermore, I’ve had plenty of conversations with Australians who are more than eager to bash the NFL because they wear pads, and there’s a forward pass, and downtime between plays, and 400-pound linemen whom they deem to be “unathletic,” and I totally get it. In actuality I really enjoy these lighthearted arguments, just as I appreciate the helpful links from some of the commenters below about the history and tradition of the AFL. I certainly don’t mean to disrespect any of that, instead I’m just letting my friends back home know what things are like for me here. Those who know me know that I’ll give any sport a try, and in fact I sincerely hope to attend an AFL match down in Melbourne because I think sporting events are a fantastic way to experience local culture (see my post about the State of Origin, which was a true highlight of our time here so far). So yeah, I mean no disrespect and I apologize to anyone whom I may have offended. Can’t we all just get along? Ok, now on to the original post…

**

So I know I’ve written a bit before about the NRL and the AFL (like, how one or both is on TV here 24/7 on at least two different channels at any given time), but now that both seasons have ended I figure I have more perspective. Also, for any American sports fans out there it seems instructive to describe the schedule and availability of American sports (I’ve been pleasantly surprised…for the most part).

The AFL “Grand Final” (that’s what they call championships here) was two weekends ago, and pitted two teams from the Melbourne area against each other. There are 16 total teams in the AFL, and all but six are in the Melbourne area. I haven’t been down there so I can’t really say for sure, but that’s like if we had some national league and had one team in LA, one team in Miami, one team in Boston, and like the rest in New York City, New Jersey, Westchester County, and Connecticut. But I guess it also illustrates how popular Aussie Rules Football is in Melbourne, and not really anywhere else. I crack up every time my husband does a mock play-by-play of an AFL game:

“He’s running around in a circle with the ball…he gets tackled! Another guy picks it up…he punches the ball to someone else…he gets tackled! The other team picks it up and kicks it down the field…someone falls on it then gets up and starts bouncing it like a basketball…and he kicks it again! They seem to have scored, and the referee signals like a sharpshooter!”

Seriously, this is the sigal refs make when they score a try, or a touchdown, or whatever it’s called:

Usually they wear pink shirts, too! (Courtesy of smh.com.au)

Essentially, there’s no forward pass, and you can only toss the ball to teammates by punching it out of your hand like a volleyball. Otherwise, you have to kick it, and you get style points, or a free position or something, if you happen to make a diving catch (you know, like more-talented wide receivers in the NFL do on a regular basis). The ball has to touch the ground every 15 meters, hence the dumb bouncing thing (imagine dribbling an oblong basketball on grass, ick!).

AFL fans argue that the players are incredible athletes who run around a ginormous field for 80 straight minutes without benefit of pads, and that’s fine, but I just find the rules to be totally silly and trivial. There can be 18 people from each team on the field at a time; every time I’ve seen a match from above it reminds me of Quidditch in Harry Potter because there seem to be so many people running every which way on an enormous pitch.

So Geelong won the AFL Grand Finall (wheee! hilarious when in the semis they played a team, Collingwood, that had almost the exact same uniform so we couldn’t tell them apart). Last weekend was the NRL Grand Final; rugby league is the opposite of Aussie Rules Football in that it’s most popular in New South Wales and Queensland, and therefore seemingly every random suburb has a team. The Paramatta Eels (for readers from Boston, that’s like the equivalent to Waltham having a team) faced off against the Melbourne Storm. There were like 12 hours of pregame coverage – as bad as the Super Bowl – and everyone was talking about it (even my Pilates teacher, who concluded class by saying, “Go the Storm!” to my great confusion. I can never imagine being like, “Go the Red Sox!” Anyway…)

We figured it was part of the full Aussie experience to tune into the game, so naturally we got beers and made guacamole (as we always do for big football games). Unfortunately, Melbourne jumped out ahead and never relinquished the lead, though Paramatta came quite close in the waning minutes of the fourth quarter. Given 1) how shady rugby league is in general (i.e. our local team was just accused of throwing games) and 2) Australia’s general obsession with gambling, it almost seemed like they made it close on purpose or something. Anyway, final score Storm 23, Eels 16.

Things I like about rugby league:

• Hard hits
• They never stop running so the games are fast-paced
• They have six chances (via tackles) to move the ball downfield & score (like four downs in football)
• The team that scores is rewarded by getting the ball back (a clever way to enhance momentum and encourage come-from-behind wins)
• No one’s ever heard of Brett Favre

Things I don’t like about rugby league:

• They seem to average about 1 yard/carry, which is pretty boring to watch. For instance, the top tackler in the NFL currently has 59 tackles through five games. Some dude on Paramatta had 64 in the grand final. That’s a lot of tackling.
• Because plays are so slow to develop, way fewer breakaways than in football (or AFL, for that matter)
• No forward pass
• Tackles can be really slow (like 10 guys in a pile) and it’s not clear when the play is over
• When one team is way up, as Melbourne was, the get-the-ball-back rule can be a real drag
• The NRL has a bit of a reputation for bad behavior. Between the alleged sexual assault of a minor, apparent gang-rape as a form of team bonding, “glassing” a girlfriend, defecating in hotel hallways, and a coach and a player getting into fisticuffs at the end-of-season banquet,  I’m awfully turned off by the culture surrounding rugby league.

But hey, I couldn’t find a single story about rugby league players shooting guns in a nightclub (knives and glass bottles are a different story), nor a mention of killing a pedestrian in a drunk driving accident. That is to say, I know American athletes are far from perfect, I just get the sense that here bad behavior is more tolerated with a sort of “boys will be boys” attitude.

On that happy note, I’d planned to finish this post with a discussion of following the MLB playoffs (every game is shown, much to my [initial] delight) and NFL, but I think I’ll save that for tomorrow. I just don’t have it in me to rehash the Red Sox’ failure to show up for the ALDS and Tom Brady’s throwing woes right now, so I’ll cover that stuff tomorrow. Suffice it to say, it looks like I’ll still be able to find a rugby game on 24/7 or therabouts, as Fox Sports is taking viewer votes to re-show their favorite games from 1999. Really? There’s no better LIVE sporting event to show in that window? WTF Mate?!

Two months of my life in words, pictures, and miles traveled

Doing my thang in Waimea Bay, Hawaii

Wow, talk about a snowball effect. You go a couple days without blogging, then suddenly that becomes more than two months! What is wrong with me?! To any readers whom I’ve managed to retain over my prolonged absence, I apologize for my disappearance and promise that it won’t happen again. I’m back for good, and determined to keep on a regular blogging schedule. And hopefully I can make it up to you in this ridiculously long and overdue post that violates all the rules of proper blogging length.

So where have I been? Well, from July 19-September 3 I was zooming all over the great United States of America. First stop: three weeks on the island of Oahu for work to cover Honolulu hotels (I took that surfing photo).

Hawaii is about a 9-hour flight from Sydney, and I had an easy time adjusting to the time change (since we were 20 -now 21 – hours  ahead it just felt like I was four hours behind, meaning I was tired in the morning and wide awake at night. What else is new?). Anyway, the weather is gorgeous, the people are super nice, and the food is generally awesome (at least if you like pork, ahi tuna, and tropical fruits), but I wasn’t a huge fan of Oahu. It kind of felt like a giant shopping mall (there are about 12 Le Sportsac stores and three Burberry boutiques along a 1.5 mile stretch, for instance) and not what I would want if I were flying 5+ hours from the mainland to get to a tropical island.There are plenty of gorgeous spots on Oahu – Lanikai, the North Shore, Hanuama Bay – but unfortunately most hotels are far away from those lovely sights.

Lanikai Beach, just outside Honolulu.

Of course, for me coming from Australia I couldn’t get enough of the malls, cheap (yet high-quality!) clothes, Cheesecake Factory, iced coffee at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, and stores that were open till 11 pm.I’ve never felt like such a disgusting materialist, ha. I totally get why the place is a huge hit with Japanese tourists (and a decent amount of Aussies as well). But if you’re going to pay to get all the way to Hawaii, it seems like Maui, Kauai and the Big Island are the places to go. Some of my lucky bastard colleagues got to cover those– I think I should have gotten a hardship bonus since I was staying in beat-up 1960s high-rises while they frolicked at the Four Seasons, but whatevs.

Anyway, for me the highlight of Hawaii was that I got to do a lot of surfing on Waikiki. I’d never really done it before, but there are lots of great surf schools, and the waves are very long and gentle, particularly in the summertime.  In fact I enjoyed it so much that I would wake up extra early during my last week (since our days were jam-packed with photography and writing) and hit the waves before 8 am. Anyone who knows me is aware that I am NOT a morning person, but I enjoyed surfing that much. I am legitimately stoked to take some more lessons at Bondi and hopefully get into it a bit here as the summer weather moves in. By the way, except for the past three days (a long weekend, as luck would have it), it’s pretty much been 70-80 and sunny every day since my return. Excluding that whole weird dust storm thing, of course.

So moving on, from Hawaii I flew to San Francisco, where I attended my friend Brian’s wedding. It was a beautiful ceremony, held at Crissy Field right in front of the Golden Gate Bridge, and I had a great time catching up with some of my friends from Berkeley. One of my favorite aspects of the wedding: this 10-piece mariachi band that played at both the ceremony and the reception:

They played a fantastic version of "Here Comes the Bride"

I was in the Bay Area for four days, so I also made it out to Berkeley to see my friend Shimrit and hit up my two favorite food/drink spots (certainly in the Bay Area, and possibly the world). First we grabbed beers at Jupiter, a local brewery that also has the most amazing beer garden (and pretty excellent pizza, too). I’m of the belief that there is no better place on earth to spend a Sunday afternoon than in said beer garden:

Ah, heaven

Afterwards we took a nice long walk over to my old ‘hood of Rockridge, where we met up with another friend to partake in the Bay Area’s best deep dish, Zachary’s. I mean, I’m not even a tomato fan, but I only wish this picture could begin to convey how succulent their ripe tomato sauce is, particularly when combined with spinach, mushrooms, and a doughy flaky crust. I apologize if drooling ensues:

Spinach-mushroom deep dish to die for

What a way to remember the Bay Area! As magnificent as it is – and boy is it ever! The air still smells of flowers just like I remembered – I was itching to get back to NYC. I took my good old reliable JetBlue flight from Oakland (totes the best airport given the lack of crowds and free wifi) to JFK, and as the plane descended toward landing I actually got tears in my eyes when I saw the Manhattan skyline. There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t miss something about New York – my friends most of all, but also the excitement and energy, the restaurants, the shopping, the people, the parks…I just love so much about it. Even my husband, who dislikes plenty about NYC, admits that living away from it has made him appreciate it and even miss it. Anyway, I was there for two fantastic weeks in which I was able to soak up so much of what I love about it. Highlights included:

• Seeing HAIR on Broadway with KT; one of my all-time favorite musicals and SO much fun. At the end of the show the audience is invited to dance on-stage with the cast. I certainly never thought I’d get to sing and dance on a Broadway stage, ha.

• Going to Whole Foods in both Union Square and TriBeCa and just wandering the long, clean, item-packed aisles. After four months of Coles King’s Cross I was thisclose to falling to my knees and crying.

• Ditto for the Strand, where I loaded up on books to bring back, heavy suitcase be-damned, since books here cost about three times as much (I wish I was exaggerating, but sadly I’m not).

• Sample sales!

• My dear friend Casey’s bachelorette party in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where we went bowling, then danced all night at classic hipster spots Bembe and Savalas, then topped it off with greasy food at a diner at 4am.

• Speaking of late-night shenanigans, traversing the city – from the Upper West Side, to the West Village, to the East Village, to Alphabet City, to a Greenpoint rooftop – over the course of a crazy night with my best friends. We barbecued, we ate at a great tapas restaurant, we made new friends at bars, and it all ended with a ridiculous dance party at a stranger’s apartment, where I somehow managed to run into a roommate that I lived with two years ago. Nights like that only seem to happen in New York, but they always seem to happen.

• Seeing Gossip Girl being filmed IN FRONT OF MY OFFICE. Can’t wait for that episode.

• Pizza at Motorino. YUM.

Even though a heat wave struck the city for about five days during my stay (and to compound the problem I was crashing in an apartment with no fan and no AC), I had just the most amazing time. Here are a few favorite shots:

First Dunkin Donuts sighting, at the JFK baggage claim. That guard clearly thought I was crazy for snapping a photo, but I'd like to see him (?) go four months without Dunkins coffee!

The new High Line park, adjacent to my office. I love these benches that look out over 10th Avenue.

A baseball game (yay America!) at the new Citi Field, where the Mets continued to suck as much as ever.

Typical weekend commotion in Union Square (as seen from the second-floor cafe at Whole Foods)

Chillin at dusk in Washington Square Park

Everyone taking pictures of everyone else with their iPhones in Greenpoint.

The Empire State Building on a hot and hazy afternoon.

I can never really get enough of NYC, but I had places to be in New England! I grabbed a seat on the fabulous Bolt Bus (again, love the free wifi) and rode my way up to Boston, where my parents and Charlotte met me for a tearful reunion at South Station. I spent the night with them in Hingham (one of my all-time favorite spots in summertime, I just wish I’d taken a picture), and the next day headed back into town to meet up with Bridget. While she was at work I meandered around my home city, marveling at how much certain things have changed (my old apartment on Marlborough Street is now a ridiculous single-family home, the Greenway park that’s supplanted the Big Dig mess), but comforted to find that every Dunkin Donuts was exactly where I remembered it. Yes, it’s the important things that matter.

My favorite place in Boston, the Public Garden.

I was overjoyed to see Bridget, and things got even better when Chelsie arrived from NYC that night. The next morning two more of our high school friends, Thayer and Courtney, joined us and we packed into Bridget’s car to head up to Maine for Casey’s wedding. Car rides with friends never seem to get old – we might as well have been 17 and heading to DQ like back in the day – and I def appreciated it all the more since I’ve missed my friends so much over these past months. If there is anything I wish I could bottle up and ingest when I’m feeling particularly sad and lonely here, it’s the laughter from moments like that. God I sound cheezy, but that’s what living on the other side of the world will do to you, I guess.

Highlights of Casey’s wedding:

• World-famous Lobster Rolls at Red’s Eats in Wiscasset:

I'll say it again: YUM.

• Casey joining in to sing with her new-husband’s band during the reception.
• Loading up on nips of alcohol at the New Hampshire State Liquor Store (again, totes appreciated how cheap everything was).
• Dancing like crazy with my friends at the reception.
• The after-party in a bar shaped like a pirate ship. What more could you want out of a wedding weekend?

The beautiful bride & me. One upon a time we had Salt-n-Pepa dance parties and Beastie Boys posters on our wall.

After Casey’s wedding I headed over to my parents’ summer house in New Hampshire, where I caught up on sleep (oh right, that), got in lots of quality time with the dog, and basically inhaled all the piney woodsyness I could muster.

Charlotte by Lake Winnipesaukee. She continues to be the world's cutest dog.

A view of the White Mountains from Jackson, NH. New Hampshire at its finest.

With the Moms at our summer house.

After a few days I flew back to NYC, where I finished up some work, drank as much Dunkins iced coffee as I could, then prepared to finally, at long last, fly back to the hubs…and home. Because after more than six weeks of traveling and living out of a suitcase (I don’t recommend that last part), it became clear to me that Sydney has joined Boston, Berkeley, and NYC as places that I think of as home, mainly because that’s where my husband is, and that’s where our life is right now. On the way I stopped in LA for an 8-hour layover, and spent a great afternoon walking the beach and eating Mexican food with my old friend Carinne. Check out this sunset in Manhattan Beach (wildfires were raging, making it extra stunning):

Califooooornia...

And then I boarded my V Australia flight and to make my way back to Sydney. The 14-hour trip in economy was a bit more arduous this time around (I love you forever, business class!) but it wasn’t too bad. I sleepwalked/skipped my way through customs (if they’d tried to take my Annie’s Mac & Cheese away we would’ve had problems) and found my wonderful husband in the arrivals hall. Best of all, I made it back just in time for our anniversary.

Since returning I’ve been catching up on work, hitting the gym (it’s amazing what not exercising regularly will do to one’s mental state), catching up on DVR’d shows like Project Runway Australia and Packed to the Rafters, planning our upcoming vacation (more on that later) and re-watching The Wire on DVD. If you’ve never seen that show, I can’ recommend it highly enough. There is nothing else out there that even comes close in terms of quality writing, richness of characters, and plot.

So now I’m totally starting to ramble and I think it’s time to wrap things up (just for now!). Here’s the final tally on some truly ridiculous statistics:

Miles Traveled: 20, 741

Flights Taken/Airlines Flown:7 / 5 (Qantas, Hawaiian, JetBlue, Virgin America, V Australia)

Days Living Out of Suitcase: 47

States Visited:6 (Hawaii, California, New York, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire)

Tacos Consumed: 12

Dunkin Donuts Iced Coffees Drunk: 167 (approx.)

Whew!

I'm leaving, on a jet plane

So I leave tomorrow for my mystery destination, and I am incredibly excited, but also filled with a bit of trepidation. It’s looking like I’ll be traveling (that is, away from our apartment and living out of a suitcase) for at least two months, which is really just cah-razy. First and foremost, I’m going to really miss my husband, particularly since I’ll probably be gone for our first wedding anniversary. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that he can somehow come meet up with me on the back end of the trip, but we can’t plan anything yet since work hasn’t told me where I’ll be going then! Ah, the life of a travel writer. Not that I’m complaining. Again, I am SO stoked to be going back out on the road, and I’m also really excited to be back in the office for a couple weeks. I’m also, like, giddy at the thought of being back in New York and seeing all my friends. So long as it doesn’t torrential downpour the whole time, I think it’ll be really great.

Meanwhile, today was a flurry of activity. We woke up at the crack of dawn (on a Saturday, blech!) to take a bus, then a train, and then another bus to a town called Telopea to look at a used car. Even though we’re centrally located enough to manage fine without an automobile, I think the hubs has been itching to get one. It undeniably makes it easier to run errands and take day trips. Plus, we’ve been told that it is NOT fun getting around here in the summer without a car, and the hubs enticed me by suggesting that it will be a lot easier to get to the beach to surf. Now I just need to learn how!

Anyway, we found the car to be to our satisfaction, and after it gets serviced and the registration gets transferred this week, the hubs will go pick it up next weekend. We got a really good deal on it (at least that’s what we’re hoping), and figure my parents will be psyched since it’s a Saab. I suppose that means I’ll actually have to drive here at some point. Another adventure to look forward to…

After we got all the car stuff sorted, we took a train back into the city and then took the ferry out to Taronga Zoo, where a baby Asian elephant was born two weeks ago– the first elephant ever born in Australia. It’s been a huge story here, like on the news and in the papers every day, and since I figure the calf will be a lot bigger by the time I get back, I wanted to see it for myself before leaving. It was well worth it! First we passed over the elephants when we took the sky tram to the top of the zoo (it’s built on a steep hillside with fantastic views of the city), and the baby was kicking it underneath its Mom, like in this picture. Then we went back and waited in line for about ten minutes to view it in the elephant barn. Since I was really out of it this morning I forgot both my camera and my iPhone, so unforch I could only photograph it with my BlackBerry, but I think the cuteness still comes across. It’s sooooo little!!!

I want one

Afterwards we meandered around the zoo, which is quite large and nicely laid out (don’t worry, we will happily return with any and all visitors). Natch my other favorite part was the koalas, even though they were sleeping (which they are wont to do up to 20 hours/day). The zoo was fun, but what I’m really stoked to do is visit this place in Thailand. I’ve always been an elephant fan, probably because I grew up on Babar books.

I’m going to end on a very random note. Last night I had a total hankering for macaroni & cheese. I already knew they don’t have Annie’s here (I will be attempting to bring a case back with me, thank you very much), but I’ve seen Kraft mac & cheese around and figured it would do in a pinch. Uh, not so much. At the supermarket I noticed that the box was kind of heavy, and when I got home I saw why: rather than powdered cheese, this gross cheese paste stuff comes in a can, and you scoop it out and mix it in while cooking the macaroni. Not only was the consistency nasty, but the flavor was totally bland. If any future expats should read this, bring mac & cheese with you when you come; otherwise you will be severely disappointed (and grossed out).

Crazily, the next time I write I’ll be stateside. Woohoo!

Banana Benders, Cane Toads & Cockroaches…oh my?

And the crowd goes wild!

So on Wednesday the hubs and I were very, very lucky to get taken to the Rugby League State of Origin game. My relatives have club seats at ANZ Stadium, which I guess they originally bought so they could attend good Olympics events when it opened back in 2000. Can you imagine having seats to a stadium that hosts like every big game? Man, and they are awesome seats, too:

I keep wanting to call this the 50-yard line, but they don't know what "yards" are here so clearly that's wrong.

As we were walking in (and it’s such a beautiful facility, by the way) my cousin was pointing out various features of the stadium to me. A couple uniquely Australian things: the line for fancy Italian coffee was as long as the beer line (I’m constantly floored by how much they love their coffee here). Also, this mobile betting booth:

In Australia, it's never too late to gamble.

It’s a well-known fact (at least here) that Australians LOVE to gamble. According to Wikipedia (and the Bill Bryson book In a Sunburned Country, i.e. my Australia bible), Australia has 21% of the world’s slot machines (or “pokeys,” as they’re called here, mainly because most gambling machines are video poker). There are FIVE TIMES as many pokeys, per capita, as in the U.S. (not shocking since gambling is only legal in certain places, but still). They have them in like every bar, even the super-cool trendy ones. So anyway, naturally there was a mobile gambling van parked outside the game. There were also dudes roaming the stadium with little hand-held devices in case people wanted to place more bets on a whim. It’s pretty funny.

As we walked to our seats some dude who’s apparently a TV comedian (didn’t recognize him, and didn’t catch his name) was telling dirty jokes about Queenslanders. I’d say about 75% of the stuff went over my head (he was making fun of their apparent accents and local slang), but we also caught the terms “Banana Benders” and “cane toads.” The former is what Australians cheekily call Queenslanders I guess (cause it’s all tropical and whatnot), and cane toads are just their local vermin. When the players ran out onto the field, Queensland actually had a mascot in a giant cane toad costume. We couldn’t figure out what New South Wales’s was, but the guy sitting next to us informed us it was a cockroach. Fair enough, they do have those here, but can you imagine if, like, New York teams had big ugly rats as their mascots or something? It’s such a different sensibility.

Anyway, at this point I should backtrack a little to explain the stakes of the game.  Rugby league (which is different from both Rugby Union and Aussie Rules Football) is most popular in New South Wales and Queensland, and therefore that’s where the majority of the league’s players come from. State of Origin is like a three-game all-star series, in which the best players who hail from these two states square off. It’s like if the NFL pro-bowl pitted all the players from California and Texas against those from Ohio and Florida, and they all cared a lot about it and the home states were rabidly devoted and made tasteless jokes about each other, all in the name of bragging rights. It’s actually pretty cool.

My general impression of rugby – that it’s just dudes running five feet and getting tackled, over and over and over again, and that the lack of a forward pass is a major drag – pretty much held true, but it’s also exciting to see and hear such brute force up close. I mean, dudes were clothes-lining each other, punching each other in the face and kneeing each other in the groin. You could hear the bones crunching! Like hockey, it was definitely more entertaining in person. It was also fun because the crowd was so into it. The entire stadium was packed, and no one left their seats until about the final two minutes, when it was clear that NSW didn’t stand a chance at victory. There were also no TV tine-outs, so the game went by really fast, and there was a lot less distracting, promotional bullshit than what you’ll see at Pro games in the U.S.

Other highlights: I continue to be entertained by the shortness of men’s rugby shorts. Not in a, “Wooo, show me some skin, baby! That’s hot!” kind of way, but just because it’s so opposite of men’s shorts in the US, where if they’re not baggy as can be and to the knee, guys freak out about looking un-manly. These dudes are clearly plenty manly, yet they basically wear hot pants. Hilarious.

NSW wears short shorts

By far the most exciting moments of the game came when someone intercepted the ball and ran it back for a…try? Of course, for me that might be because it was the aspect most similar to football. Queensland has some dude named Israel Folau (note, sports team websites here are so ghetto that I couldn’t find an official roster/bio anywhere) whom the gentleman next to us described as “a 19-year old freak of nature.” Sure enough he seemed to constantly be jumping two feet higher than everyone else and sprinting away from the pack with the ball. Watching him actually reminded me of the Ravens’ Ed Reed, who is certainly the greatest INT-returned-for-TD playmaker I’ve ever seen.

All in all, it was a fantastic experience. It was great to be out doing something so authentically Australian, and since I obviously love sports it was the perfect kind of event to attend (I’ll take a sports game over the Opera House every day of the week). What I really can’t wait for, though, is cricket. The Windies arrive in November for a three month tour of Australia, and I’m already getting excited…

The Coolest

Read first, watch second:

I was just linking to to a Youtube video of “O, Canada” for a work review (you can’t go to a resort in the Dominican Republic without hearing it at least once per visit), and because I enjoy being cheeky I linked to a rendition from an Edmonton Oilers Stanley Cup Finals game. Now, everyone’s entitled to their own opinion and I don’t mean any disrespect to anyone, but every time I hear another country’s national anthem I always find myself thinking, “That doesn’t touch the Star Spangled banner.”

Maybe everybody thinks that about their own national anthem, I dunno, but ours just seems to be so prevalent in popular culture. I remember when I played lacrosse in the UK and my teammates made me sing it, and half of them even knew the words and the tune (“I just love it, it’s so cheesy!” one of them told me, to my mild dismay). And surely no other country turns out versions with as much flava as the one above.

Did you know that the tradition of singing the anthem before sporting events only began during World War II? FDR encouraged doing it at baseball games as one of many ways to promote patriotism (I learned this while researching a paper on wartime baseball back in college). Which brings me to the all-time coolest rendition of the anthem that I’ve yet heard (followed closely by Jimi Hendrix, though his version had somewhat dissonant undertones that kind of taint it for me. As a musical piece: phenomenal. As the national anthem: makes me sad. Anyway…).

I first came across this video when The Sports Guy referenced it in one of his mailbags a couple years ago. It’s Marvin Gaye, totally an all-time cool cat, performing it over a basic drum beat at the 1983 NBA All-Star game. Between his stunna shades, his sharp suit, his cool swagger, his silky voice, and the fact that a bunch of NBA legends (Bird, Magic, Dr. J and more) were standing on the floor with him…I mean, as Simmons would say, how can you not get goosebumps? His performance was so badass, in fact, that Nike used it in a great ad campaign last summer to promote the Redeem Team.

After watching the “O, Canada” video, I just had to listen to Marvin’s Star Spangled Banner. I know it’s corny, but hearing the song at sporting events almost always makes me tear up. How lucky are we to have the space, and freedom, and money to have fun with our friends and family in the sunshine at a baseball game, or at a bacchanal like the NBA All-Star game? The song hits me especially hard when I’m abroad, and missing and thinking about the things that really make me love our country. And of course the 4th of July is coming up – if I had any patience at all I’d wait to post this then, but I don’t – so that just adds to it even more. I have a feeling my friends at home will quietly laugh at how cheezy I’m being, but I know the expats will get it. God Bless America.

P.S. This isn’t to say that Australia is a place without tremendous athletic traditions and customs (and it’s not like people here aren’t free to have a great time at sporting events!).  I’ll be experiencing that firsthand tomorrow night when we attend the Rugby League State of Origin game, which is apparently a very, very big deal. I promise to post with pictures and observations laster this week. Go Blues!

Color me chuffed

Don’t hate me, but this post from Gawker about this summer’s wretched weather in New York kind of cheered me up this morning. Here I was thinking that it sucks to have missed out on spring and summer at home while having to suffer through two winters in a row, while apparently I’m really just experiencing the exact same thing. Behold, the upcoming 10-day forecasts courtesy of weather.com (Sydney on the left, NYC on the right):

On the other hand, I’m quite sure that summer here is almost unfailingly amazing. And even though there is technically rain in the forecast here right now, showers only seem to last for a few minutes at a time, akin to Florida or something like that. One more reason that YOU SHOULD ALL COME VISIT ME!!