observations, 2

beet, fennel, and blood orange salad - beautiful!

continuing with my observations on aussie culture...

on aussie television:

television programming is dominated by 3 types of shows: cooking, home improvement, and talent. of the three, cooking shows appear to be the most prominent - they air masterchef australia every single night of the week! we regularly watch it while we're making dinner, and it's really started to affect our kitchen behavior (i'll often ask kp to help me "plate" dinner, for example. i'm such a poser!)

  

also, we have learned that if you want to sound like a real foodie over here, you must call everything "beautiful" (beautiful flavors, beautiful texture, beautiful ingredients...)

 speaking of beautiful, we're going to harvey's tonight for duck confit. yessss!

observations, part 1

(photo from IMDB)

i've been here for over a month now, just long enough to make a few observations about australian culture.

on the aussie:

1) aussies will go out of their way to help you... even when they have no idea how to help. sounds lovely, i know, but this is often only helpful insofar as it teaches patience!! one of our colleagues at uq says this is the very unique aussie blend of congeniality and inefficiency.

2) aussies are very forthcoming with their opinions. case in point: the grad student who swims every afternoon to maintain his ex-army/bouncer physique and who told kp he was the "splashiest motherf*cker in the pool."

3) australians are modest and down to earth. they loathe pretentious behavior and distrust those who draw attention to themselves (this is the tall poppy syndrome, which describes a social phenomenon whereby those whose status and achievements elevate them above everyone else provoke criticism and sometimes attack). they're generally the most unceremonious, self-deprecating people i've ever encountered. this may be partly explained by the country's geographic isolation... or the fact that it was for so long a penal colony for british thugs... or by the peter weir film, gallipoli, which recounts the WWI gallipoli campaign in turkey, and in particular, one attack in which wave after wave of soldiers from australia and new zealand were sent to certain death to create a diversion for the brits (although this, it turns out, is not quite historically accurate). the attack marked a turning point in the australian national consciousness, the sealing of a collective identity, and is considered to be an australian foundational myth. in fact, ANZAC day (australian and new zealand army corps), the aussie equivalent of memorial day, takes place every april 25, the day of the attack. australia day - roughly equivalent to the 4th of july in terms of celebration - is january 26, the day commemorating the claiming of sydney cove by the british in 1788.

noosa

yesterday, kp and i celebrated our 5th anniversary (just three months shy of #6) by going to noosa up the sunshine coast in queensland. we'd each spent the actual day last fall with colleagues/mentors - i took mine to dinner at bistro daisy in new orleans while kp went to the beach for the day. we were excited to get GG out on the road, break her in, and i was astounded to learn that we were just two short hours from this kind of scenery! 

our first stop was the glass house mountains, the eroded remnants of 25,000,000-year-old volcanos that jut out above eucalyptus fields and pine plantations.

  

another 45min in the car, and we were here: 

lunch on the beach: tasmanian oysters au natural

it turns out that oysters and wine go straight to your head... so we hit the trail after lunch to walk off the afternoon buzz. destination: hell's gate. i found at least three perfect beach picnic spots along the way, and kp stopped every 200m or so to admire the surfers... so the light was fading fast by the time we got to the top, and we made it back to the beach just in time for sunset.

this guy was one with the wave

 

next weekend we're probably going to hang around brisbane - the farmers' market is back on saturday, and i've found an antique store i want to check out - but i'm thinking we'll have to come back here at least once more before we head to canberra. for a texan, proximity to a beach like this is just too tempting!

tea time

one of our neighbors dumps a bucket of stale bread out of her second-story window every afternoon. she calls it "tea time," and these are her guests...

i totally crashed this party, by the way. there were at least a dozen parrots hanging around, as well as some others, but every time i moved, they took off. bread-lady said they were bothered by my presence. hmph! it also just so happens that this afternoon party takes place in the shade, which is too bad, because the light at this time of day is gorgeous.

the powerhouse market (more fun with the 50)

on saturday kp and i grabbed all the cash we had (which was only $35 since we'd forgotten to run by the atm. doh!) and went to the new farm farmers' market, aka the "powerhouse market." we needed coffee and dinner fixins', so naturally, the first two purchases we made were strawberries and kettle corn. doh! and with that, we were down to nearly $25! but in the end, we did pretty well, as you can see from the "still life with powerhouse goodies" shot i took as soon as we got home: organic eggs, berries, mandarins, coffee (and kp sweet-talked the gal into giving him a free latte with his purchase. smooth!), lettuce, a red bell, three bars of soap (including one made with dirt from a nearby town - does it get any more local than that??), and the corn.

believe it or not, we managed to eat a proper meal that night thanks to the leftover lamb we had from friday's date night at ortiga, which was amazing, btw. and the strawberries are hands down the best i've ever eaten.

also, i'm slowly getting the hang of this 50mm. imagine what it could do if i took it out into the light!

the siglet

meet sigi, the cat we are caring for in exchange for a pretty dope apartment in new farm (one of the hipper areas in brisbane). sigi was not impressed when we first moved in and generally steered clear of us unless it was mealtime. she's warmed up though, so much so that we're starting to feel guilty about two-timing bob...

anyway, i thought the siglet was ready for a photo shoot though by her expressions here i'm not so sure she agreed. these were taken with the 50mm on the new camera. i'm still working out focusing and depth of field on this one, and i think i should be using a tripod indoors (most of my shots are super blurry - what else is new?), but these aren't too bad.

this one's my favorite. can't you just hear her thinking "b*tch, get that camera out of my face"??

zoom zoom!

ladies and gentleman, without further ado... i give you GALAXY GIRL!! the mazda 3 sp 23 we bought after a mere 24 hours in town! jetlag shmetlag. we knew what we wanted. and when we found out that we could only get financing through the end of our visas, ie, june 2014, we realized we literally could not afford to wait. so she's ours. well, she'll be ours in two years. 

 galaxy girl, or "gg" for short

so, it turns out taking pictures of the car is significantly easier than driving it. holy mind-melter, batman! things go really wonky when you're on the right side of the car. the left side of the street is bad enough - i can't tell you how often my mind just goes blank when i come to an intersection - but the inside is the real challenge. we've got the cleanest windshields in town because every time we try to put our blinkers on, we throw on the wipers. (this happens a lot because the aussies, as it turns out, take indicating very seriously). and depth perception? forget it. it takes 20 minutes to park this thing on a curb (or "kerb" as the aussies put it). and i haven't even tried to parallel park yet. 

our crib

i never thought i'd say this, but we're kind of into the whole apartment building thing... i hear canberra is a lousy market (expensive and kind of sh*tty - yay!) so we're thinking we might go for something new and clean and most likely totally void of charm... hey, we did "charm" in paris. it came with mold. it might be time to try something else.

 

our alarm clock

sydney!

kp was invited to give a talk at one of the universities in sydney last week, and i got to tag along. the guy who hosted us is an old friend from paris, a guy we thought we'd never see again when he left france in 2009 to take a job back in australia... and now here we are. who knew!

he took the day to show us around town, taking us for lunch at bronte beach and for a stellar view of the harbour... we're sold. this city is amazing.