Entry 47: It's a Good Weekend (to be in Newcastle)

[Nobbys Head Lighthouse, Newcastle Australia]

This weekend is a great one to be in Newcastle. For one, the weather is gorgeous. I saw some online images of a snow-dusted DC, with the people on the street bundled up like the younger brother in A Christmas Story. Then, I looked outside my window, at all the shorts and t-shirt clad passers-by and pondered when I should step out in this 85 degree weather and join them. It was a nice thought.

For two, people are nice here. Cars stop for you at the crosswalk, pedestrians move out of your way on the sidewalk when you’re running, and nobody steals your shoes when you leave them onshore and have a dip in the ocean (at least not yet). I heard the Australian comedian Jim Jefferies on the Adam Carolla Show, and he commented that Australians are nicer than Americans. He was mostly joking, but I certainly can’t disagree. We Americans should try to adopt the Australian way and just be more civil. Every place has its assholes, I’m sure, but I feel like the percentage in the US is disproportionately high. An anthropologist should do a study on this. Is Margaret Mead still alive?

[See, even the insulting graffiti is nicer.]

Anyway, it got me thinking on a bit of a tangent. A mindset of many Americans that really bothers me is that emulating other countries is somehow anti-American. We see this in things like public transportation, gun control, legalization of marijuana, and healthcare. Politically, it doesn’t help your case – in fact it might even be detrimental to it – to point out that we already have a working model for some of these things in other countries. It’s frustrating, and it’s a loser mentality, because you end up continuing to do things in an inferior manner for no good reason. What winners do is incorporate the successful characteristics of other systems into their system. Smart business leaders and football coaches know this, politicians struggle with it. The US does a lot of things right, and we do a lot of things better than other nations. However, with the things we don’t do so well, let’s try to cherry pick from the rest of the world, and get better. It seems like common sense, really, and yet it’s not common at all.

OK, I’ll hop off my soapbox now and show you all some more pictures. I ran to the Nobbys Head Lighthouse this weekend, and saw a new and beautiful side of Newcastle. Nobbys Head is where part of the ocean splits off and forms the Hunter River. The beaches there are quite nice and relatively empty, even on a Saturday. This is the best thing about Newcastle, in my opinion. The beaches are on par with Sydney’s, but much more conveniently accessible and much less populated (Newcastle’s population is about 1/16th that of Sydney). As I was running, I couldn’t help but think that if beaches like this were in a city like, say, DC, they probably wouldn’t be that cool, because on any nice weekend there would sixty thousand people there fighting for a few feet of sand, polluting the area, and congesting the roads.

[A beach in Newcastle. I think this one is actually called Newcastle Beach.]

[The Hunter River. I'm not sure when the building in the background was erected.]

[Nobbys Head Lighthouse from the "other side". This is my favorite picture I've taken so far in Australia. The big stone blocks in the foreground with the little lighthouse in the background. I don't know... it just looks cool.]

Anyway... Surprisingly, Newcastle was referenced by the aforementioned Jim Jeffries. He talks about recently meeting Crowded House’s Neil Finn. Apparently Jeffries, when he was 15, went to see Crowded House in Newcastle, but the show was canceled due to a now infamous earthquake that destroyed the venue. He tells a rather humorous anecdote about relying this to Finn. It also involves his drunken girlfriend and Paul McCartney. I found it quite funny. Here’s the link if you want to hear it. (Click “Listen Now” then “Adam Carolla Show: Jim Jeffries”. It starts at about the 79:00 mark and takes about five minutes.)

Well, that’s all for this entry. Catch ya on the flip side.

Entry 46:Take the Long Way Home

I’m at home on a Wednesday afternoon because it’s Australia Day. According to Wikipedia, Australia Day “commemorates the arrival of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove in 1788 and the proclamation at that time of British sovereignty over the eastern seaboard of New Holland.” According to all my colleagues, it’s just a day off to have a good time. It’s like Columbus Day in the US, if Columbus Day were a bigger deal. (Off the top of my head, I can’t even tell you what month Columbus Day is in. I’ll guess May… Nope, October. Way off.)

It’s a beautiful day so I’m probably going for run soon, followed by a quick plunge in ocean. That sounds very refreshing. I also have to stop by the supermarket, even though I went yesterday, because I forgot to buy a few items. I hate it when that happens. I think what I’ll do is incorporate my trip to the supermarket into my run. I’ll run to the store, quickly purchase the goods I need, run back to my apartment, make a quick drop off, and then run to the beach. That way the shopping won’t take up much extra time. That’s good thinking D, good thinking indeed.

So, I went to my first Cricket match this Sunday. It was a great (and long) experience. The sport really isn’t that hard to understand if you can sit and watch an entire game in person. There were eight of us at the game total, including three of my coworkers, T, H, and F. We certainly drank enough beer for eight people (but it was just me, T, and H drinking it). I won’t bore you with the details of the game, other than to say Australia beat England. I really wanted to take pics, but I forgot my camera. I’ll post a few from the Internets instead.

[A few shots of Sydney Cricket Ground I pulled off the Net.]

Although the match was entertaining, the real story occurred afterward. T, H, F, F’s cousin, and I arrived at Central Station about forty five minutes before the departure of the train back to Newcastle. F saw his cousin off (she lives in Sydney), while the others of us went to get food. Remarkably, the only thing open was Hungry Jacks (aka Burger King). I say remarkably, because, what the hell? A major event in a city of 4 million people ends, and there is exactly one establishment open in the main node of the transportation network? You could have wiped your ass with slices of Wonder Bread, sold them at five bucks a pop to the drunken masses, and made a small fortune. I couldn’t believe none of the other proprietors at Central would have opened up shop for a few hours to capitalize on this market.

[The Hungry Jacks at Central Station.]

Back to my story. Since we have ample time (so we think), we go to Hungry Jacks. T is very hungry and H wants to eat as well. I’m not particularly hungry. (I point this out to add a bit of irony to the narrative. You might be able to see where this is going. We miss the train, and I find myself sitting in a nearly abandoned train station at midnight eating shitty food that I didn’t even really want in the first place.) The line at Hungry Jacks is super long and the whole operation is complete chaos – too many customers, not enough workers. They can’t pump out the food quickly enough, and although we place (and pay for) our orders a good fifteen minutes before the train leaves, by the time we get our food, the train is gone. We just miss it. It left five minutes before we expected (at ten after, instead of the usual fifteen after), which really screwed us. F made the train and confirms that we missed it in a text.

It’s now 11:15pm and the station manager informs us that the next train doesn’t leave, until 1:45am. That’s right. We have to wait two and a half hours to get on a train that takes three hours to arrive at our destination. I’m beside myself. I know deep-down that the only realistic thing we can do is wait it out, but I’m not ready to accept it yet, so I do that thing where you pace around for twenty minutes and check and recheck the schedule fifty times. Eventually, I sit down by T and H and “enjoy” a subpar, lukewarm chicken sandwich, which, of course, isn’t even what I ordered.

The normalest people in the world don’t ride the train from Sydney to Newcastle at 3am on a Monday morning, I can tell you that much. At one point during the ride, I have to walk through a few carriages to find the bathroom, and it’s like a scene out of the movie Jacob’s Ladder (a creepy, mindbender from the ‘80s). The train is a bit rundown and dim, and the way the light is hitting me I’m making two shadows, so it looks like somebody is following me. I walk by an old, smelly, toothless woman (who may or may not be a demon) and she just gives me the evil-eye. Then, I walk by a woman who’s probably in her early twenties. She’s massively overweight and her face is puffy and red like she’s been crying for hours. She quickly looks down to avoid eye contact and then promptly leaves the carriage. It’s weird. I half-expect to suddenly come to in Danny Aiello's chiropractic office.



I go back to my seat and try to sleep, but it’s hopeless, so I turn on my iPod. I downloaded a bunch of podcasts earlier, but I can’t get into them. No offense to Terry Gross, but her low-key, probing style is doing little for me at the moment. I switch it to music and watch T and H try to sleep.



Eventually, just as day is breaking, we do arrive in Newcastle. Walking to my apartment, I notice the café owners making their morning preparations and a woman jogging down the street. (Is there anything worse than seeing somebody up and jogging before you’ve even gone to sleep, by the way?) Once I get home and lie down in my bed, I have some sort of weird restlessness going on, like my body figured I must be in trouble since I’m still awake, so it started pumping out adrenalin. I think I finally doze off somewhere around 6 am.

Anyway, the one good thing about an ordeal like this is that once it’s over, it’s over, so it’s not a big deal now. However, this might be the last time I use public transportation. From now on, it’s chartered limos, helicopters, and jets for me.

Entry 45: Non-update update

I meant to update this blog mid-week, but I didn't have time, and I still don't have time for much of an entry. Work has been busy, and S is leaving soon on another business trip, so we've been spending more time together than usual. (We're going to the beach in a few minutes.) S has a tendency to act like we're never going to see each other again each time she leaves, so my free time is at a premium immediately before her trips.

Tomorrow we're going to a cricket match with several of my colleagues. I'm excited about it. I think I understand the rules well enough now to follow the action. The ticket states the match will run from 2:20pm-10pm -- seven and half hours. That's good ammo against anybody who says baseball is too long.

Anyway, I'll try to take pics and keep you all posted on the excitement that is international one-day cricket.

Entry 44: Dr. Hunt

The other day at the gym, after I had finished doing an exercise, I went to put the weights back on the rack, but somebody else had put different weights in the spot where my weights should have gone, so now there was no room for my weights. Not feeling like completely rearranging the rack to make room, I just set my weights on the floor next to the rack. Immediately after doing so, one of the guys who works at the gym came up and started a conversation with me.

“Hey mate, I’m Steven. What’s your name?”

I told him and we shook hands. I was certain that he was going to give me a little hey-let’s-keep-the-gym-tidy spiel, but instead he said, “Has anybody every told you that you look exactly like Dr. Hunt from Grey’s Anatomy?”

I told him that I’ve never seen the show.

“I’m telling you mate, it’s uncanny. His hair is a little more red than yours, but when you have a little growth… usually when you come in here you have more growth, right? (I had just shaved that day, for the first time in a few weeks.) I’m telling you, it’s spot on. I told some of the girls at the front and they’re like, ‘yeah, that’s him’. Anyway, mate, I just had to tell you that, ta.”

It’s funny because in my daily routine I see the same people over and over (on the bus for example) and sometimes I’ll comment on them to other people (or in a blog), but I never think of myself as being one of the ones on the other end.

Anyway, I went home and told S, who watches Grey’s Anatomy, and before I even got out the name of the doctor she said “Dr. Hunt! That’s hilarious, because whenever I see him he reminds me of you.” So, it’s official. I must look like Dr. Hunt (played by Kevin McKidd). I’ve posted a few pics below. Most of you can judge for yourself. He’s a few years old than me, but I can see it.

[Kevin McKidd, my alleged doppelganger.]

Not the worst person in the world to be compared to, by the way. Kevin McKidd isn’t exactly Jude Law, but it’s not like the guy at the gym said, “Has anybody ever told you that you look just like Manuel Noriega?”

[Who's the uglier enemy of the state, Maneul Noriega...]

[... or Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?]

To change the subject, S and I went to see The King’s Speech last night and I really enjoyed it. It was funny, because we went with two Aussies, a Kiwi, and a German, and the Americans (S and I) and the German basically knew nothing about the story before watching it. We didn’t even know that there was a King George VI who took over after his brother scandalously abdicated. The others couldn’t believe this. It must just be a product of growing up or not growing up in The Commonwealth.

The whole notion of royalty just seems so bizarre and unnatural to me. All the pomp and pageantry, and bowing-before-them, and formal titles, and hallowed this and hallowed that. Is there a bigger crock of shit? Nobody’s that cool, and nobody should take themselves that seriously. But the history is quite interesting, and I found myself Wikipedia-ing the major characters in the film for a few hours before I went to sleep last night.

[King George VI. In the film, he was depicted by Colin Firth, who was terrific.]

On a more somber note, you have probably heard about the floods that have been devastating parts of Australia. Most of the flooding has been happening much north of where I live (if Newcastle is Atlanta, then the heart flooding is New York, to give you a rough point of reference), but still, it’s crazy to watch the news.

I’ll leave you with this clip, which is one of the most HOLY SHIT! videos I’ve ever seen. Watch the entire thing.

Entry 43: Vacation Part 2 (Cairns and Newcastle)

After a few nights in Sydney, the fearsome foursome (me, my parents, and S) hopped on a flight for Cairns. On the plane, I was sitting in the middle seat with S on one side and a petite, shy Asian woman on the other side -- the perfect setup, it was like I had a seat and a half to myself. But of course, just before takeoff the petite Asian woman switched seats with an overweight, overbearing woman, and just like that my one and a half seats was reduced to about three fourths of a seat.

This woman had the type of body that oozed from her seat under the armrest into my seat. I battled her for a while for a modicum of elbow space, but I gave up when she just started putting her elbow on top of my arm. In her "defense", however, there really was no where else for her elbow to go. She couldn't help but take up my space. That's the problem with sitting next to an obese person on a plane. It's not like you can ask them to stow some of their fat in the overhead bin.

Come to think of it, this actually happened on the flight back from Cairns. Oh well, for the sake of the story it doesn't really matter in which direction we were headed.

Anyway...

The morning after arriving in Cairns, we set out on a tour cruise of the Great Barrier Reef on a beautiful, sunny day. Cairns had been bombarded with rain prior to our arrival, so we got incredibly lucky weather-wise. The cruise was a tad bit touristy, but once we got to the reef it was worth it. We went snorkeling and it was amazing -- clear blue water and all sorts of interesting and colorful marine life. I wanted to spend more time snorkeling than I did, but my mask hurt the bridge of my nose and it became unbearable. I tried switching masks, but that didn't help. I think it's just the shape of my head. I must have a Cro-Magnon brow. My dad was having the same problem, so maybe it's hereditary.

[A picture I pulled off the Internet of the pontoon we visited on The Great Barrier Reef.]

[A not-that-exciting picture of the water and some snorkelers.]

We spent the next day lounging around the pool and walking around town. And by walking around town I mean ducking in and out of shops selling all sorts of t-shirts, souvenirs, and other gewgaw. I'm not a huge fan of going to these places (I'm not a huge fan of any form of shopping), but near little souvenir shops there are often ice cream parlors which makes them bearable.

Our next big excursion was to an old mining-boom village called Kuranda. We arrived by train, which made for some good views.

[A picture of the front of our train, taken from the middle of the train, as it rounds a bend.]

[A beautiful shot of a waterfall somewhere along the way between Cairns and Kuranda.]

The village of Kuranda itself was rather unimpressive. It was basically a lot of tourists and more t-shirts and gewgaw. (This time I placated myself with a beer instead of an ice cream cone.)

[A funny picture of some people I don't know.]

From Kuranda, we took a cable car to an Aboriginal culture experience. It wasn't your typical cable car ride, however. It was about 4.5 miles long and took about 20 minutes. This also provided some spectacular views. It freaked my mom out a bit, as well. I was mostly OK with it. We were quite high, but somehow it felt to me as if the trees would catch our car if it fell, even though I knew that in actuality that was unlikely.

[Scene from our cable card.]

[Another scene from our cable car.]

The culture experience was fun -- nothing spectacular, but parts of it were interesting. We got to throw spears and boomerangs which was cool. We each got two tries with the boomerang and if we caught one of our throws we could keep the boomerang. I really wanted to catch one, and my second throw was decent, but I didn't come all that close to catching it. Nobody really did, except the guide.

[We stepped out of the mesh box and took turns throwing a boomerang.]

[A big spider that was hanging out right by us.]

After Cairns, it was back to Sydney and then straight on the train to Newcastle. (The start of the new year came and went without much celebration by us.) We actually spent more days in Newcastle on this vacation than we did in the other places, but I hardly have any pictures from Newcastle. It's probably because this is where I live, so I'm less inclined to bring a camera out with me.

I'll give a quick rundown of what we did in Newcastle.

Walked around the harbor (nice as always).
Ate fish and chips at to the beach (delicious, but it took forever).
Drove to and walked around Warner's Bay (fine, but a bit of a letdown).
Watched the movie Social Network (okay, not great).
Watched the Seahawks beat the Rams (awesome).
Went on a wine-tasting tour of Hunter Valley (very fun).

The last one I'll talk about a bit more, because I do have a few pics from it. A van picked us up for the tour at about 8:30am, and we started tasting wine at about 10:30am. By the time lunch rolled around at 2pm, we weren't falling down drunk, but I doubt any of us could have passed a Breathalyzer test. At these tours, you're only drinking a few sips of each wine, but if you try ten wines at each winery, and you go to five wineries, well, as my mom put it, "that's a lot of little sips." Sure, you could taste it and spit it out like a fine connoisseur, but that's pretty unsatisfying, and it's also the wuss way to do wine-tasting, if you ask me.

[Grapes.]

[A nice scenic shot at Hunter Valley.]

[Rows of grapevines at a winery in Hunter Valley.]

Well, that pretty much closes the book on our Christmas/New Year's 2010/2011 vacation. The next day my parents flew back to the U.S. and I returned to work. (Both of which were unfortunate, I was really enjoying things as they were.) It might not have been the traditional way to celebrate the holidays, but it was a good one -- a good one indeed.

Entry 42: Vacation Part 1 (Sydney)

My parents flew into Sydney on Christmas day, and so began our 2010 holiday Down Under. Or, as I call it, The 10-Gallon Vacation, since ten gallons is approximately the combined total volume of sun screen we applied and ice cream we ate.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I'll try to spare the keyboard a bit and post lots of photos.

The day after Christmas (Boxing Day as they call it here, because it's traditionally the day the prime minister boxes a kangaroo, this year Julia Gillard won by split decision), we went on a guided tour of the Blue Mountains just outside of Sydney. Despite some morning rain, the tour was excellent. We lucked out and were put in a smaller van by ourselves, so it was just me, S, my parents, and our personal tour guide Paul. Paul was tremendous -- knowledgeable, friendly, accommodating, and great company. He really made the tour.

First, he took us to a national park where we fortunately spotted some wild kangaroos (Paul told us it was a 50-50 chance of seeing kangaroos).

[Wild kangaroos. If you look carefully at the one who's center-frame, you might notice an extra pair of tiny legs sticking out -- a joey in the pouch.]

Next, we went to a lookout point, with some great views...

[Some scenic shots from the Blue Mountains.]

cool birds...

[A pretty red bird of some sort.]

and weird looking trees.

[An odd looking tree.]

Then we went to see the famous Three Sisters rock formation. Nobody knows for certain exactly how the name came about, but I tend think it has something to do with an ancient, incestuous, lesbian menage-a-trois. (Then again, when it comes to historical perspectives I tend to err on the side of taboo homoeroticism.)

[The three sisters.]

Part of the tour involved descending into a valley by cable car, and then returning to higher ground via this crazy roller-coaster-esque train. The incline was ridiculous (the steepest of any train in the world, we were told). You felt like you were going up at a 90-degree angle.

[As we ascended they played the Indiana Jones music -- nice touch.]

After that, we went to a wildlife park (i.e., zoo). Animals living in captivity is an interesting subject. While it is often sad to see seemingly depressed creatures, lying motionlessly in relatively tiny cages, at least they are being preserved. As Paul pointed out, the harsh reality is that animals in the wild are victim to hunters and shrinking habitats. At the very least, zoos probably keep some species from becoming severely endangered or going extinct. (For example, Paul told us most tigers in the world live in captivity in the US.) Of course, it would be nice to not endanger animals in their natural habitats in the first place, but that's not the world we live in. Anyway, some pics.

[Momma kangaroo with her joey.]

[Funky bird.]

[Cute koala bear, which isn't actually a bear at all, but a marsupial.]

[Proud peacock.]

On the day after the guided tour through the Blue Mountains, our last full day in Sydney, we took a cruise around the famous Sydney Harbor. This turned out to be the least fun excursion of the vacation, in my opinion. For one, it was a rather gray, misty day. For two, you could barely understand the tour guide through the crappy PA system on the boat. For much of the cruise it sounded like this.

Kzkzkzkzkz.... Kzkzkzkzkz.... If you look... kzkzkzkz... houses... kzkzkzkz... 16 million.... kzkzkzkzkz... Murdoch family... kzkzkzkzkzkz... sold in 2005... kzkzkzkzkzkzk... hahahahaha... kzkzkzkz... private beach... kzkzkzkzkzkz... Nicole Kidman...

I did manage to get a few good shots though.

[A big boat and a colossal boat in Sydney Harbor. Seriously, look at the size of that thing.]

[The Harbor Bridge with a piece of the Opera House.]

[A few of the super expensive harbor-side houses we kind of heard about.]

[A point where the harbor opens out into the ocean.]

The day of our flight out of Sydney, we slipped in a quick tour of the iconic Sydney Opera House. In 1957, the original cost estimate of the opera house was $7 million. Even by 1957 standards this seems laughably low, and it was. The final estimated cost upon completion in 1973 was $102 million. As you can imagine, this led to a lot of political guffawing. After continually butting heads with the Public Works Department, the original opera house designer Jorn Utzon resigned in 1966, and was not invited to the grand opening of his masterpiece. He and the government did reconcile their differences, however, prior to his death in 2008.

[The Sydney Opera House.]

I'm going to end this post now. However, the fascinating story of our vacation will continue in my next entry -- Vacation Part 2 (Cairns and Newcastle).