Friday, February 10, 2006

Error Correction - Global Superfriends

Elaine is also a global superfriend with 2 continents (I forgot about our fun trip to Tokyo!), Jenny Jau and Tak Okamoto as well (same Tokyo trip...good times!)

posted by Dan, Lover of Dim Sum @ 8:35 AM 0 comments

Melbourne - Fun facts from Australia

This cafe has free WIFI, which is my favorite thing in the whole world (that I can't eat).

OK, so here are some fun facts about Australia trip to wet your appetite:

1) I flew down last minute to Melbourne and went for drinks with my mate Vivek who I worked with telephonically for a year or so but never actually met. We ended up at like 3 divy bars last night, each with its own live cover bands. Unlike Sydney, Melbourne hasn't outlawed smoking and I subsequently reek like an ashtray

2) Melbourne rocks. I want to live here.

3) I spent a decent part of this morning debating if I want to ring up my old boss who lives in Melbourne. Finally I got the courage to ring and see if he wanted to grab coffee (if you know this guy you understand why it was such a debate) and it turns out he's in Sydney today! How ironic!

4) Vegemite shits all over marmite. I forgot how much i love a good slice of sourdough toast with butter and vegemite. Its like the perfect anti-hangover remedy.

5) Australians have so many words for female genetalia, and two nights ago I feel like I heard them all. Words I would never have known had I not come here. Some I knew, some I heard for the first time. My three favorites are: c*nt (a classic really), twat (has a bit of an upper class feel to it), mut (pronounced moot...very old school) and my new favorite is minger (or minge for short).

6) It took me several days to remember how to speak the Australian dialect (no the accent, the expressions and stuff). Por ejemplo, I totally messed up ordering coffee. I was all "can I have a tall black?" and they were all "you mean a LONG black?" and I was like..uh...yeah. It was like messing up a masculine/feminine article in spanish/french. Je voudrais un pamplemousse. Oops! UNE pamplemousse.

OK, thats all you get for now. More fun notes soon. Have a dinner party tonight, drinks with McWilliam tomorrow (top bloke) and then my big flight to DARWIN coming up.

Stay tuned.....

posted by Dan, Lover of Dim Sum @ 8:14 AM 1 comments

Melbourne: Notes from the road

OK, in case you haven't seen fotos, I have created a picture page at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dohgi/

These are fotos that I have posted as they become available.  The camera my folks got me for x-mas is really working out, although sadly my ability to take fotos isn't!  I may be the worst photographer ever!  Fortunately the camera does all the work for me.  Australia pictures will get posted once I'm done here I think.

These are literally notes from the road as I am on a shuttle bus taking me from the dinky tiny airport in Avalon, Victoria to the city of Melbourne.  The tickets were ultra cheap on the Australian equivalent of Southwest Airlines, and I bought them yesterday!  I have only one friend left in Melbourne (my old boss Bartels doesn't really count as he doesn't drink), and I have never actually met him!  We just know eachother from all the global citi-friends emails that were passed back and forth while I was slaving away for the C-monster.  Anyway, will be fun to match a name with an email address!

The past few days have been more surreal than I expected as I spent them in Sydney.  Following my quickie trips to Auckland and Wellington, I flew into Sydney and took the train directly to my old office building in the CBD to pick up keys to Frances Cranston's apartment, which is MASSIVE.  I hadn't been back to Sydney since I tearfully left back in August 2002 (the tears were for my oceanfront apartment, which I was literally in love with…).  Anyway, literally NOTHING has changed!  Everything is exactly the same as I remember it, which is something I can't say about Orange County or NYC or Hong Kong, which seem to change radically after only a couple of weeks.  Sydney looks the same, and my old haunts are still around.  Fortunately Turkish Pizza and beer are still popular in Sydney, so I have been a happy camper.

FYI, turkish pizza is the best thing ever (better than beer even!).  I am convinced that it’s an australian invention although if any of your turks out there can provide contrary evidence I'd be happy to hear it!  I'm hitting Turkey in June, but am trying to manage my expectations and not assume I will get turksh pizza in Istanbul.  Anyway, picture this: A giant slab of turkish pide bread covered in cheese, mediterranean grilled veggies and possibly kebab meat, rolled and baked, and then DIPPED in dips (ie. Hummus, baba, etc.)  OK, getting hungry thinking about it!  Stupid bus…

So anyway, Sydney is awesome and the same as I remember it.  What I didn't remember is how lonely of a place it can be as well.  Many of my Australian friends have left for other places (mostly London and HK) and Sydney isn't exactly the easiest place to meet people.  I have had fun seeing the people I know here, but I think the wanderlust to move here again has kinda passed, much like it had for HK.  That’s not to say that if someone offered me a juicy high paying job in either place I would turn it down (depending on hours of course!), but I don't know if I have the burning desire to live here any more.  Or maybe on some level I just assume that I will keep coming back…which means I'm assuming I will always have money?  Maybe not the safest assumption!

Wellington, however, was AWESOME.  Not a huge town, but really beautiful and very walkable (except the steep hills).  Also according to the Sydney people apparently Wellington gets really cold in the winter (not sure what that means to a sydney person).  But the food in Wellington is also AWESOME.  For example, at one place I had a parmesan brulee.  You heard me.  PARMESAN BRULEE!  Imagine crème brulee, but instead of sweet creamy yum it’s a savory cheese flavored creamy yum, caramelized on top and served with a small dollup of parma-prosciutto ice cream!  HOW WEIRD, but at the same time creative and delicious!!  Wellington is ok in my book!

Melbourne also would be an awesome town to live in…more city vibe than Sydney and a bit more old-school…one of my favorite towns.  I'm kinda sad I'm only here for the night and tomorrow morning, although hopefully I can squeeze some decent eating and drinking in (the neverending quest!).

Neverending Quests:
1) Finding a city for me to live in
2) Finding the best mac & cheese (this is a joint quest with Wendy and Robin, although they have made much more progress than i!)

3) Finding the perfect gin (for martinis, not for gimlets or with tonic, although those are good too)
4) Losing those elusive 10 pounds…I think this may be inversely linked to quests #1-3 (FYI, Chicag is america's fattest city.  Philly was a couple of years ago…)

5) Finding the perfect pair of travel shoes (slip on, matte leather, cheap, rubber sole, durable, look ok for biz casual but don't mind getting mud on them….)

posted by Dan, Lover of Dim Sum @ 7:42 AM 0 comments