christmas in july, part 2

"the great outdoors"

traded the christmas mobile for this beauty

another semi-epic road trip under our belts (our poor kitty), kp, bob, and i arrived in brisbane with just a few hours to spare before christmas. long enough for lb to make a chocolate icebox pie (that we later had to give away - delicious but too rich. bleh) and for santa to score his favorite tango dancer a new pair of shoes!

we had a lovely christmas eve dinner with some of kp's colleagues. she's french and he's from san fran... and now they live in australia... under this towering tree (see above). i stared at it from the patio where we ate until the sun finally disappeared. and i could stare at this picture another couple of hours. on the menu was a repas à la provençale: boiled lobster, potato, green beans... and homemade aioli. it would have been perfect were it not followed by the christmas pudding, which is very british (and so still a big part of the aussie christmas) and which i personally find to be an abomination. my apologies to the queen, and to all the pudding fans out there, but i object. fortunately, there was champagne aplenty! 

santa found us, even at the antipodes!

so, a sweaty christmas... this was a new experience for us. even in hanoi it's cold at christmas. i'm sure we've had an unexpected texas heatwave or two in december, but it was 85 degrees at 8am... nothing left to do after the presents were opened but to head to the beach! we went back to byron bay, to see what she was like under the sun, and were NOT disappointed. there was plenty of room despite the fact that we were certainly not the only ones to head for water to celebrate. and the water was perfect, absolutely perfect. 

 

 this year's holiday grog

then, a few days after christmas, we went sailing, finally taking advantage of an unexpected perk of my job - colleagues with boats! they took us swimming and for a boat barbecue of german sausages. too bad the scenery was so awful:

 our swim spot

the afternoon storm rolling in

fortunately for us, it waited to rain until we'd just stepped off the boat.

and the day after that, we went to the lone pine koala sanctuary in brisbane, where we fed the kangas, saw the dreaded australian taipan, which is the most venomous snake in the world, listened as kp did his best tasmanian devil impression, and discovered that koalas are indeed the cutest freaking animals you've ever seen.

 so fierce! (actually he's yawning here)

i realized mid-way through the christmas week that we were actually truly and fully on holiday. lounging around, reading for pleasure (what's that?), and taking in all sorts of loveliness the greater brisbane area has to offer. note to self: take more holidays (of the full-on, don't check email AT ALL, beer in the afternoon, shower only if you feel like it variety!)

heavy reader

cum-riep sua! greetings from phnom penh!

i've got more christmas pics to post... and now cambodia ramblings to share (can you say "total insanity"?)... but first, a glimpse of my heavy reader, doing what he does best (i.e., killing it in the french philosophy department). i'm so proud.

get a load of the editors' names (you may have to squint!)

christmas in july, part 1

"the road trip"

christmas came early this year. kp flew to canberra, and we celebrated our reunion by packing up poor old bob and setting out on a *summer* road trip to brisbane. nothing like a solid day and a half of desolation and baking heat to get you in the holiday spirit...

but first, our tree! we don't do much in the way of decorating - too transient - but this year i went all out: new stockings and a christmas mobile. i LOVE it.  

our christmas stick, found in the nature reserve behind our house and decorated with yarn and a few vintage german ornaments

still haven't done this trip via the beach route, which is what MOST people do, and for obvious reasons. nope, kp wanted to try out a new (and yes, shorter) inland route. so this time, we had the pleasure of spending an evening in dubbo, australia. the beer and schnitzel were just as tasty at club dubbo as they were at the armidale pub, so i can't complain. and the barrenness of the inland scenery is just too gorgeous - even from the passenger side, which is where i got these first four shots:

    

  

 

the old bridge that is now a wild 'little-shop-of-horrors'-esque sculpture outside the wellington caves in nsw

 tapped kegs

dubious horses

patio DIY

you may recall that we spent a few long, tear-filled weeks in july trying to find an apartment in canberra. why the lamest city in australia has such an outrageously expensive rental market is still a bit of a mystery to me (though i'm guessing we have the transient civil servant population and their living subventions to thank), especially given that canberra is sorely wanting for pleasant accommodations. 

but then we found our little hidden garden castle, which we now agree is our most favorite apartment ever. seriously. if only this place opened on to the 14th arrondissement in paris - we'd be in heaven! the best thing about our place - aside from the fact that it is surrounded on all four sides by other people's overgrown gardens (and a chicken coop - love!!), is the patio. we've never had outdoor space before, so we were eager to furnish it and start enjoying our shrimps on the barbie. as it turns out, however, i'm not a huge fan of cheap outdoor furniture (bleh! no style), and we weren't about to drop $1000+ on some swanky teak stuff, so we decided to see what we could find at the salvage warehouse. the big score came when some neighbors gave us a pine breakfast table, but it turns out i'm also not a huge fan of glossed pine... 

a few hours, a few bags of saw dust, and a few coats of paint later, we were ready to go. add some ikea chairs, a couple of salvaged dining chairs from the 60s, and a fully recycled plastic rug (in "miami vice" colors, per kp's request), and voilà!

here's kp, working up a sweat with the table sander we rented - that thing had torque! 

 the *almost* final outdoor room. just days after taking this shot i found a funky old wooden/brass chandelier on the side of the road. with a coat or two of spray paint and a few candles, i think it'll make for some pretty groovy lighting!

bonus shot: since we still don't let him outside, bob has found his own special leisure suite on our winter blankets.

blue mountains

greetings, reader! i finally found a moment to catch up on the blog, post a few pics from our recent adventures down under... first up, our weekend getaway to the blue mountains. it was a rainy, overcast november weekend, but that was fine by us. there is so much bloody sun here - a little cloud coverage is always welcome. 

we spent most of the weekend lounging about - booking massages, perusing vintage shops, and enjoying local entertainment - but we also got in a few good hikes:

 the blue mountain's most treasured landmark - the three sisters turned to stone

i can't get kp on a ferris wheel without a major struggle... but he had no problem with the "mountain devil", the steepest incline railway in the world (as of 1997 anyway), with a vertical descent of 583 feet. it was terrifying.

my cowboy down under

i love it when my dreamy cowboy comes to visit. we take walks and cook out on the barbie... last weekend he took me for the most ridiculously awesome fish and chips in batemans bay, just two hours from canberra... 

and what a hunk! i'm not going to lie, i was NOT stoked when he came home from shepler's in mesquite with all that wrangler gear, but now that it's starting to break in a bit... i think i'm digging it. in 20 years or so, that shirt is going to be amazing. i can't wait.

come back to visit, kp. bob and i miss you.

he's either saying: "stop pointing that damn thing at me" 

or "stop making fun of my boots!"

many would have starved were it not for the rabbits

the australia museum

once upon a time, the europeans let loose some rabbits in their newly conquered terra australis, thinking it would provide "a touch of home" in this strange new land. within ten years, the few rabbits released on privates estates had... well... bred like rabbits. the ecological effects were devastating - erosion, species extinction, ringbarking (sounds dirty, doesn't it?) - until the great depression, when farmers began trapping and eating the rabbits to survive. it turns out, i could learn a trick or two from these resourceful aussies. sometimes our greatest challenges become our greatest moments.

well, i'm not sure about greatest moments - not yet, anyway - but i have worked up a list of canberra greats:

1) tiny's green shed. when i'm not at home or in my office, chances are i'm at tiny's. it's a great big warehouse full of cast-offs, a love for which my folks instilled in me as a young lass. most of it is truly junk, but so far, i have scored two pretty great kitchen chairs and a few vintage plates.

look at all those rackets, just waiting for a potential hoarder like me!

2) pick-up week. i remember trolling the neighborhood with my pops back in the mid-90s, looking for treasures in other people's trash piles... once a month, the city would pick up old furniture, etc, left on the side of the road - if we didn't get there first, of course. i'd never again come across anything quite like it until moving to canberra. but bonus - they toss stuff all the time here! i haven't picked anything up yet, but i could have had a whole set of kitchen chairs and a desk and a kid's table and a (surely broken) washing machine... and we've only been here a few months. it makes every day's commute to work an adventure!

3) spring in the bush. there are kangas everywhere, and now that it's more green than brown, the city is awfully pretty. and we've got a nature reserve two minutes away by foot! here are some shots we got on a recent walk:

i call this one déjeuner sur l'herbe

4) there is yoga and tango here, so at least i'm not trapped in my head ALL the time.

5) braidwood, nsw. canberra is just over an hour away from a great little town with an even greater little vintage furniture shop. maybe i'm just giddy after two months in canberra, a veritable wasteland of vintage wares, but i think it might be the coolest, most well stocked shop i've ever encountered! kp and i scored a desk made out of aussie blackwood by mid-century canberra furniture designer, fred ward. i'll get pictures up as soon as kp's office is set up.

6) the Arc. the national film and sound archive of australia is housed about three minutes from my office, and they run great films all the time. a few months ago, i saw a half dozen films during their annual southeast asian film festival (AWESOME!). they've got a lovely courtyard, and they make a pretty decent coffee.

7) the food. the saturday farmer's market. sammy's asian kitchen. dickson noodle house. italian and sons. the deli sandwiches at the university house on campus... really, there is a lot of good eating to be done in this town.

our new digs

our new hood

i was going to wait until i felt we'd fully moved in to post pics of our new chez nous, but i'm starting to sense that might never happen... so may as well post now.

it took us two full weeks to find this place, not including the countless hours spent online looking at super-wide-angle shots of what we later discovered to be hovels... i cried more than once over the rental market here (though during the first couple of weeks, it was hard to identify exactly what was making me cry at any given moment), and had resigned myself to paying $1700/month for something like this, when we found this little guest cottage. i would say it is easily my favorite bit of canberra, aside from my office, which is also pretty nice. good thing too, since i spend 85% of my time between home and campus. i've been told we live in the "hippy" area of town, which suits me fine but which doesn't really seem to mean anything in particular (honestly, i don't see any difference between this neighborhood and every single other neighborhood in town. seriously, you will not truly know what generic means until you spend some time here. wow.)

spring has finally sprung! there are flowers everywhere!!

i hung dad's old shot of the horses and then totally pooped out. everything else is just propped up against the wall. 

everything is really WHITE, which makes the whole place feel really sterile. but i'll take institutional over cave-like any day.

this patio is still very much a work in progress. we need to move our camp chairs and buy a bigger table. i go to the recycling warehouse weekly in the hopes of scoring something, but nothing yet...

bob has certainly made himself right at home...

trees that shed their bark instead of their leaves...

well, i think i’m finally ready to talk about canberra. does that sound dramatic? it does, doesn't it? i don't care - it has been an INTENSE couple of months.

first, let me preface this by acknowledging that i don't adjust well. don't do change. never have. funny coming from someone who hasn't been able to sit still for longer than two years since she graduated college, i know, but it is what it is. and my adapting to life in canberra and at the university has been one long, painful lesson in accepting change. accepting that e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. is different. accepting that it's going to take me twice as long (at least) to do anything. i thought learning to drive was going to be the kicker. oh, jees, to be back at that stage...

the difference between adjusting to a place like vietnam, or even france, and adjusting to australia can be summed up in what kp calls "the uncanny valley." i don't have the time or the energy to try and explain it with any eloquence, so let's just say it describes the experience of *thinking* a place is familiar - and on the surface it actually being very familiar - but slowly realizing how foreign it is. and basically being totally weirded out by that realization. this experience is much more pronounced in western anglophone countries, which share lots of cultural values and practices, than it is in non-anglophone countries. which is perhaps why, despite some undeniably awesome moments of culture shock in nam, it wasn't so hard to adjust. i knew it would be different, and it was. end of story.

but here, and especially in the professional context of my new university gig... things that i never even considered could be different are different. you name it. the smallest details. and it's just been doing my head in. most of what i've been processing is silly academic-related stuff (eg, departmental culture, student behavior, university admin - the bureaucracy of taking leave, for example, which is a given perk of academic life back home), but there have also been some lifestyle bumps: we have to go to the gas station to buy big cans of gas for our stove at home (and we are LUCKY to even have a gas stove!!); the gas stations, speaking of, don't do pay-at-the-pump; and while we're on the subject of gas, it costs $75 to fill up our mazda 3!; there's no equivalent to trader joe's or whole foods; all this brown bush starts to get to you, rent is hiiiiigh and the accommodations are grim (except for our place, which is pretty sweet... so sweet that i had to take in a roommate to afford it while kp is in brisbane); canberra is not a happening town; the scarcity of black beans and the return to old el paso brand tortillas (sigh)...

add to this the pressures of the new job, which i will spare you, and the sudden feeling that we are so very far away, and well, let's just say i've been a bit fragile of late. but i think that just being able to say that here means i've turned a corner of sorts, which is a good thing.