Some Observations From Tomorrow

According to the clock on my computer, it is 8:05 p.m., Wednesday, February 23, 2011.  According to the clock on my microwave, it is 1:05 p.m., Thursday, February 24, 2011.

Somewhere in the middle is the correct time.  I thought that when I finally arrived in Australia, I would stop living in two or more timezones.  I was wrong.  My friends and family, and in fact a part of my life, are still in one timezone, while me, my stuff and the rest of my life are in another.  I thought it would be easier to not have to think and calculate the time differences.

But as it is (still) February 23 somewhere, I shall celebrate my first month in a new world -- I have officially been here one month today.  And after the near-forever long wait to get to passport control, things have gone pretty smoothly.  Some observations:

• Hot is hot no matter where it is.  37/98 is hot regardless of the setting.  At that point, it's hot whether the humidity is 20% or 100%.  My uncle is famous for responding to people who complain that "it's not the heat, it's the humidity" with the quip "it's a dry heat in the oven, but no one climbs in one to cool off."  And he's right.  Once the air temperature reaches normal body temperature, it's bloody hot and that's all I can say about it.
• Huntsman spiders will spin a web over ANYTHING! that does not move in the dark for five minutes.  And it's a sticky, strong, nasty silk.  I have given up trying to keep my porch railings clear of webs.  I watched a news clip on using spider silk for bulletproof vests a couple of days before I left the US.  The researchers have genetically engineered goats to produce spider silk in their milk.  It would be easier to have Australian residents collect and supply the webs from their porches.  On my ten-house street, I bet you could have enough silk for a vest in a week!
• Everything I had read proclaimed that Australia has more things that can kill a person per square inch of land than anywhere else in the world.  What they don't tell you anywhere is that the non-lethal things are abnormally huge.  Aside from the huntsman spiders and the snails, other harmless things, like moths are huge as well.  It's the land of freakishly large creepy crawlies.  Case in point:

• Comforter covers are evil and the person who thought they were a good idea should be publicly flogged.  This lesson was learned after forty-five minutes struggling with a down comforter and a comforter cover on my (thankfully) empty dining room floor.  When it has to come out for washing, it's not going back in!!!
• In a land that drinks more tea than anywhere else except Ireland, I am amazed that iced tea has escaped them.  I am constantly being offered "a cuppa" but never, not even on 39/102 days, have I been offered "a glassa."  Guys:  brewed tea, lemon juice, and ice.  Best. Hot. Weather. Drink. Ever.
•  English-based cultures really are "separated by a common language."  For example:  Mincemeat is a sweet pie filling to me, not beef pushed through a meat grinder.  Water enters the sink by means of a faucet; taps deliver beer to glasses in bars.
• Clotheslines may be bucolic and energy-efficient, but they are not as romantically charming as I was led to believe.  No one ever tells you about cleaning the spider webs off before you can hang clothes, or about the hazards of birds and damp laundry, or about the wasps and bumblebees who are more curious than cats.
• Daytime tv is as mind numbingly insipid here as it is in the US -- quite possibly because it's all imported from the US.  I have my choice of rerun US dramedies or US talk shows such as The View, Ellen DeGeneres, Oprah, and Dr. Phil, with the odd Filipino, Portuguese, or Greek news show (in their native tongue) thrown in.
• Prime time tv is not much better, as most is either imported US shows, imported BBC shows, or "reality" shows like The Biggest Loser, The Farmer Wants a Wife, or New Zealand's Next Top Model.  Though, I can say Adam Hills in Gordon St. Tonight is well worth the time.  And thank you Mr. Hills for having a real person as your on-stage side-kick/assistant, rather than a waifish, thin-as-rails, vapid, media-ideal blonde.
• When it's your own home, cleaning up the kitchen is not so much a detested chore to be put off as long as possible but a daily necessity.  I have become an obsessive dishwasher and counter wiper. I have also come to understand the wisdom of making the bed every morning.

Overall it has been an interesting experience this last (or first) month in a new world.  Hopefully by the end of the second month, I will have ordered a couch for the living room and a dining table and chairs for the dining room (which will definitely mean the comforter can't be re-stuffed in the cover!) and I can have people over for dinner, which I will cook on my gas stove.  I know gas is the choice of professional chefs, but I don't care!  I want my 70's avocado green electric stove/double oven combo back!!!!

Stay tuned for more of Lynn's adventures.

Just a Regular Guy

Channel 7's Sunrise morning "news" program showed coverage of the Purple(??) Carpet Premiere of Justin Bieber's biopic Never Say Never this morning.

I am sure that the world is nearing a tragic end when we interview a 16-year old who has shot to overnight stardom and his reply is "I hope the movie shows me as a regular 16-year old guy."

If Justin Bieber is a regular 16-year old guy, I'm Queen Elizabeth.
Someone stop the madness.
Please?

A Bit of Almost Home

Friday, after my dearest was finished with his work for the day, we went on an adventure. We set out to look at sofas, dining tables, and bedside tables.  We drove about an hour and a half to an outlying suburb of Melbourne and, after looking at several furniture stores, we took a chance and stopped in an unprepossessing shop.  As is usual, it's the most unlikely places where you find nice things.  We went in and found a sofa we both like, and became one of our top contenders.  The 10-12 week wait for the custom-built piece will need to be weighed against the availability of the other contender.  So we have good choices for sofas.  We struck out on both dining tables and beside tables, though my father-in-law has suggested that he can build us bedside tables.  We are weighing our options on furniture.

We took the information for the sofa and, after discussing the threatening skies, we decided it was time to head on toward home, despite the fact that our route was the same as people leaving the city for their weekend homes and we would we be caught in Friday afternoon rush hour traffic.  No more than ten minutes into the drive, we ran into a blinding downpour.  We crept along at about 10 miles per hour, but we didn't mind, given the near white-out conditions.

Our plan had been to stop at a strip mall on the way back home, to check out a home storage solutions store and, possibly find some dinner.  We both decided that would depend on the conditions when we got there. As it happened the rain had let up and my dearest was needing a bit of a rest from driving, so we decided to give the strip mall a go.  We pulled in to a parking place and braved the still not-so-lightly falling rain to head into the first shop -- which happened to be a furniture place.  Finding nothing that captured our interest, we moved on to an office supply store, where we found some ink pens, a wastebasket and a filing system for all those papers you end up having to keep despite the best efforts at going paperless.

After sending my dearest back to the car with the office purchases, we headed on down the strip mall, finding a lighting superstore.  A few nice fixtures and table lamps were hiding among the hotel foyer lighting displays, but having neither a hotel to light nor tables to put table lamps on, we moved on.  Next stop was the home storage solutions store, and I went a bit wild there, ending up with a laundry basket, a couple of drawer dividers, a potato masher (I am old-school in my kitchen gadgets and usually prefer manual over electric, especially given the safety protections in most food processors/choppers end up causing more work and waste than would be by just doing everything manually), and a set of four classic Pyrex mixing bowls.  I was very pleased with the purchases.  And we had considered allowing my dearest to head to a music/stereo store, but as we got there, the sky opened up again in blinding rain.

Even with the heavy rain pounding down outside, it was quieter outside than in, so I sent my dearest in for a quick look.  He came racing out when the rain let up, to head to get the car so we could move on.  He made it about halfway there before the sky opened again, so he came back to where he had left me, while we considered our options.  After discussions, he headed for the car in a lull and I waited for him to come back to me.

As he was walking the flooded parking lot drained nearly completely, leaving standing water only in the low spots (what is it with parking lots? they always have standing water, long after the rest of the land around them have drained).  Just as I saw him approaching, the sky opened up again.  I knew he would not be able to see me, or the fact the water had drained from the passenger area in front of me, but still I hoped he would realize that by staying there where he had left me, I meant for him to stop, that it was safe to stop there.  He missed the message -- I guess we are not as connected as I thought -- and I had to make a dash, weighed down with my not-so-light purchases, for the car.  I got positively soaked, but only on the right side, as that was the direction from which the rain was coming.  

There was no way out of the parking lot but through the standing water, so we made our way carefully though the mid-calf deep puddle and out to the main road.  Despite being completely drenched and looking not unlike drowned rats, we were starving.  I had planned to treat my dearest to a gourmet dinner at Hungry Jacks (Burger King) or Red Rooster (Kentucky Fried Chicken serving roasted instead of fried chicken), but he had originally planned to surprise me with a stop at a Mexican restaurant.  I considered the options, our bedraggled state and decided, what the heck?  Let's go for a sit-down Mexican dinner.

And so we did.  Soon Taco Bill was upon us, and my mouth was getting set for the best Tex-Mex Australia could muster.  I was not entirely disappointed.  This particular Taco Bill was in a building that was at one time a church -- based on the Holy Water fonts and the stained glass windows, I would say it was a Catholic church in its former life, but I could be wrong.  It's always interesting to be in buildings that were at one time churches but are no longer official Houses of God.  I am always torn between feeling guilty for possibly desecrating a church, and happy that the building is not being left to rack and ruin.

My moral quandary was pushed aside by my hunger and eagerness for a familiar but new experience.  I was pleased to see that Taco Bill offered free chips and salsa for each table, though a bit disappointed to find the chips were bagged and not the thin, crispy, salty triangles of house-fried goodness found in most US Mexican restaurants.  The salsa appeared to be house-made, but I could be wrong.  It could have been a bought base, mixed with fresh ingredients.  Either way, it was good.  I would rate it a 4 out of 5.

After studying the menu, I decided on a chicken and sweet corn burrito, served with refried beans and Spanish rice.  The beans were some of the best I have had -- just the right amount of spiciness mixed with a creamy goodness that comes from re-frying, and yet still not the mush bean paste that some places at home serve.  The rice was a complete disappointment -- bland converted rice with cooked to death red and green peppers and a smattering of raw-ish onions.  The rice is something I do not have to do again anytime soon.  However the chicken and sweet corn burrito, that is another story entirely.  Local Mexican restaurants at home would do well to add this to their menus.  It was excellent.  A roasted, seasoned chicken was pulled and mixed with whole kernel sweet corn, some more sweet than hot green chilies and some cheese (my guess would be the ubiquitous Australian Tasty cheese, but it could have been a queso blanco as well) and rolled into a flour tortilla which was then broiled until the tortilla ends were brown and crispy and the cheese had melted making the filling rich, creamy and wonderfully delicious.

My dearest had a vegetarian sampler platter.  I am not sure his opinion of the dinner, but I would not mind trying a bean & cheese taco made from the refried beans, cheese, and a fresh pico de gallo.  My dearest also had a virgin lemon margarita, really a lemon slurpee.  But it was good enough to make me wish I had given a margarita a go.  Next time.  And there will be a next time.

After dinner, we made slow progress home through growing rain, and made it to the driveway just as the sky opened again.  Once in the dry safety of the house, I discovered the only part of me that was not completely drenched were my feet.  My blouse, skirt, bra and underwear were soaked through, but my socks, shoes and feet were completely dry.  I have no explanation of this, but I will take it.  Wet feet are the worst part of getting caught in the rain.

Saturday morning, we learned most of out path had been flooded in the rains overnight.  While we got drenched in the rain, we were lucky not to have gotten trapped by the flood waters.

Slick Paces

Yesterday (Friday) there were torrential rains in and around Melbourne.  In fact, my dearest and I got caught in a downpour while we were out shopping.

During a lull in the rain, I went out to look at my new home in the rain.  I love grey, overcast, rainy days so I wanted to see how my home looked outside in my favorite kind of weather.  While I was walking down to check out my back garden, I found:

crawling along the wet sidewalk.

The rain began coming down heavily, or I would have stayed to see where he was headed.  He was moving at a near record pace.  An hour later, when I went out to get in the car for the shopping adventure, he was halfway up the brick wall.

Flashing Back

The big news in my new homeland is Cyclone Yasi, currently a Category 5 tropical cyclone (hurricane), but forecasted to weaken slightly before landfall in Queensland.

While the area in the Cone of Uncertainty is far from my new home (roughly the distance from Mobile to New York City), the news is, naturally, covering it 24/7.  And this is causing some flashbacks.  The only home I have ever known is New Orleans, Louisiana.  As everybody knows, New Orleans was devastated in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.  My world changed forever on August 29, 2005.

The coverage of Cyclone Yasi is comparing it to Hurricane Katrina, both in strength and in the called evacuations, complete with images of thousands of Queenslanders pouring into state-run emergency shelters.

I evacuated from New Orleans 2 days before Hurricane Katrina hit, so my experience of the storm was through national news agencies and local newscasts and updates video-streamed to the safety of a small Arkansas town 500 miles away.

The coverage is eerily similar.  I feel for the Queenslanders.  I feel for the people forced to look at their possessions and decide what is worthy of making the cut to be saved from the storm.  I feel for the people who are, in some cases taking a last walk through their homes.  I know all too well the emotions that are welling up in them as they tape and board the windows, turn off the electricity and gas to the house and lock the door for what may be the last time.

I was lucky in Hurricane Katrina.  My house lost 30% of its shingles, all the gutters, some siding, a window, and most of a tree.  I was lucky that we did not have to fight with the insurance company over coverage for flooding or anything else.

I pray that the Queenslanders are as lucky; that the worst they have to deal with is cleaning out a fridge and waiting 18 months to have a roof repaired/replaced.

Storms such as these are life-changing - whether you are seriously effected or not.  Even if you escaped unscathed by all accounts, as I did, you are never the same.  I know that all the people who were in New Orleans in 2005 suffer from PTSD.  I know that no amount of therapy will ever bring the wold back to the way it was on August 28, 2005.  Those 5 years have been lost to a new reality.  It will be the same for Queenslanders.  Even if they are untouched by the storm, they will be forever effected by the experience.

The forecast is for Cyclone Yasi to make landfall about 10:00 p.m. local time near Innisfail, Queensland.  My prayers go out to everyone in the path of the storm.  Stay Safe.

Special Days

Today is my parents' 42nd wedding anniversary.

Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad!!!