The Graduation

Wednesday Sept 26, 2007 7:30am

Last night was the graduation. There is something odd about attending a graduation where there are no caps and gowns, but that is the way they do it here. No pomp and circumstance either. But what there was in full measure was a heap of laughing, crying, excited, and anxious kids. They are thrilled to be finished with classes, and the formal is tonight—so there were spray-on tans all over the place, and almost every girl had her nails done. That is not too different than the US. However, the kids here have to wait about 5 weeks and they take their high school certificate exams. This is a standardized exam and the scores on it determine what sorts of university programs will be available for them to apply to. Think of it like the SAT.

Today we are attending the play at the Sydney Opera House. I think this is the one thing here that I am most excited to be doing. Seeing a performance at the Sydney Opera House is a once in a lifetime event. The play is called Don’s Party and it turns out it was apparently written about the neighborhood in which Meagan lives. I will report back tomorrow with a critique of the play.

After the play we are driving out to Meagan’s house to see her leave for the formal. She is wearing a gorgeous beaded flame orange column dress. I will definitely post a picture. I am so excited she is wearing orange, it is one of my favorite colors and she looks so fabulous in orange, she has the perfect skin tone for it, spray on tan or not.

Tuesday Sept. 25, 2007 2:45pm

G’day mates:

Today we walked a good portion of the Eastern Beaches Walk; it took most of the morning. The walkway connects Bondi Beach with several other beaches in this area. We stopped on Tamarama Beach (pictured on the left) for an iced tea (bottled, because absolutely no one actually brews iced tea here). While walking back toward Bondi our conversation turned to the subject of skin cancer in Australia. Australia has the highest rate of skin cancer in the world. Presumably this is due in part, to the fact that the actual hole in the ozone is over the southern hemisphere. A few years back the Aussies were able to make a good dent in the skin cancer rate by mandating that all school kids wear hats as part of their uniform. We got to see these hats on the kids who were visiting the aquarium yesterday as part of a school field trip. However we noticed another contributing factor to the skin cancer rate here that has nothing to do with the ozone hole. Take a look at the two pictures here and tell me what is missing compared to any beach or café that you can think of in America.

Unfortunately, readers, the pictures that were supposed to go here were corrupted somewhere between camera and computer. I apologise for this and I will attempt to retake the pictures and put them here. This being the situation, I will go ahead and tell you what was missing in the photos.

Umbrellas.

There is not a single solitary umbrella anywhere on Bondi today, and it is a really busy day at the beach (for a Tuesday anyway). In California and Florida, the two places with which I am most familiar you would never go to the beach without an umbrella. Never. I have not been to a beach without an umbrella since my Wildwood days. And let me tell you dear readers, that is going WAY back.

I also cannot think of any outdoor eating establishment that does not have some kind of shelter from the sun. That said, it is only fair that I tell you, most cafes here DO have a few umbrellas if you prefer the shade, but almost all of them have large sections of their patios in full sun. And the sunny seats are the premium seats.

Here are the culinary notes for the day, I ate “shrimp on the barbie” for lunch. It was very good, but I would prefer my shrimp not come with their heads still attached. No worries, you just pluck the heads clean off and you’re all set. It was a hell of a mess though let me tell you. Other culinary note: we entered McDonalds today to purchase a soda. (I will not eat McDs on this trip), they have a thing called a MacOz sandwich. In the picture it looked like a regular old burger. Not so. It comes with a slice of (are you sitting down?) beet root on it. Beet Root! Who would even thing of slapping a slice of beet root on a hamburger. Won’t be trying the MacOz, but who says McDonalds doesn’t cater to local tastes?

Sydney Harbor

Tuesday, September 25, 2007 7:13am

Yesterday was our tour the harbor day. The first item on our agenda was to go get tickets to see a performance at the Sydney Opera house sometime this week. The concierge suggested we take the ferry to the opera house. We followed his advice and it was fabulous. You can buy a day ticket and you can take all of the ferries you want all day long. So we got a really nice tour by water of Circular Quay (that is the part of the harbor where the opera house is) and we also spent a good bit of time at Darling Harbor. So, back to the tickets, we are going to see a play called Don's Party Wednesday afternoon at 1pm. You can read about it here: http://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/sections/whats_on/boxoffice/event_details.asp?EventID=2000&sm=1&ss=1 There were only about 6 seats left; we were lucky to get to see anything in there at all. After picking up our tickets we ate some lunch and hopped back on the ferry over to Darling Harbor.

At Darling Harbor we went to see the Sydney Aquarium. The sharks were very impressive, as was the saltwater crocodile on display. There was one tank however that impressed us more than anything else, and it was the jellyfish tank. There was one tank of jellyfish that were luminescent, they glowed when a dull light was shined through the water. So in this dark room you could see the glowing jelly fish swimming in their tank and it was very cool. We also saw the largest lobster I have ever seen in my life, it had to weigh—I’d guess—20 pounds or more, it was colossal.

So after all the sightseeing in the harbor we rode a city bus back to Bondi beach. We went to a private club called the Bondi Icebergs for dinner (they allow guests). Link: http://www.icebergs.com.au/ The food was mediocre but the view was incredible and worth going for. The Bondi Icebergs have two large Olympic size swimming pools that are filled naturally when the tide comes in. Yes you read that right. The tide literally washes into the pool and last night the water was particularly rough so it was quite a show. As the tide comes in, it blasts into the wall that is the side of the pool and the water just crashes violently over the side filling the pool. We asked the kid at the restaurant how they deal with all the sand that we figured must just fill up the bottom of the pool and he told us that the pool is completely drained once a day and when they drain it all the sand goes out with it. So they keep the thing clean by totally refilling it every day.

Today we are planning to just relax all day probably at the beach and then we are going to Meagan’s graduation tonight. I’m finally going to get these entries put up on the web. As well as the pictures.

The Exotic and the Backwards

Monday Sept. 24 7:02 am

Yesterday I was lamenting to myself that this place was not exotic enough considering how damned far away it is; yesterday things took a turn for the exotic. We started out the morning on the beach. (I talked about this yesterday and with the single bird eating a fish.) We had a beautiful walk along Bondi Beach and we noticed some odd things there on the ground. (Pictured here to the right.) I did not mention it yesterday because I was completely unaware of its significance. We noticed these blue things all over the sand. They were like inflated tiny balloons. We figured they were some kind of seaweed. Charlie was about to touch one, when I shouted at him “oh my god don’t touch it, it might be some kind of irritant!” Honest to God, I did not have any idea what this little thing was, but thank god I spoke when I did and also that Char took my advice. The damned things turned out to be Portuguese man-o-wars. I have read about these little nasties but I have never seen one. Apparently, people show up all the time in Sydney hospitals with stings and allergic reactions that shut their breathing down. We at least had the presence of mind to take a few pictures of the things. Turns out, even after they are dead, their stingers are in perfect working order for about two days.

On a more pleasant note, we went out to Meagan’s house in the afternoon and the three of us spent the afternoon at a place called the Koala Park. It is a very tiny zoo with only Australian animals and you get to pet most of them. So I had the totally cool experience of being able to pet a Koala and about 5 different kinds of kangaroos. And we had we had some very funny conversations with some tropical birds who said all kinds of things, and it was so weird because they say that parrots do not really understand what they are saying, but this one bird said to us as soon as we walked up to his cage, “do you have a cookie?” When we didn’t produce a cookie he said “bye bye.” Charlie kept talking to him and he came back over to us and he flipped up his head feathers and whistled at Charlie. It was really funny. We saw some odd porcupine-looking animals I had never heard of called echidnas. The totally strange thing about these little fellows is that their hind legs are on backwards! The claws on their hind legs actually face their tail! Also, for the first time ever, I got to see a peacock with his feathers fully extended. This did absolutely nothing to attract the attention of the female peacock, but you should have the seen the female humans in the park shouting and hollering for him when those feathers went up. Human males, take note.

We ended the day by going down to see the opera house by night. It was breathtaking. Under the opera house, along the water there is a bar with live music—all outside. It was totally packed with people. We ordered wine and beer and three of us sat and talked and caught up on all the family gossip. Turns out, Meagan has a boyfriend! We get to meet this guy later this week. No worries, all of Charlie’s shotguns are safely back in the US.

Longest Plane Ride of my Life

Sunday Sept. 23 2007 10:25am

We have been in this country roughly 24 hours now. Our flight was incredibly long and uncomfortable. We sat on the tarmac for close to three hours because of some technical difficulty with the plane. Because there were over 300 ,we could not deplane and it was very hot in there. When we finally landed and got to the customs check, the guy said in his Aussie accent “How was your flight?” and I replied “Long.” And he said, “well we’re not exactly next door are we? No worries, you’re here now and we hope you spend lots of money on your holiday.” That will not be a problem. The average cocktail runs $14.00.

I cannot help but make comparisons to that which I know well, the US and the other major trip I took a few years ago to London. For being as incredibly FAR AWAY we are from home, this place really isn’t too much different than home. All the same food is available plus the nasty vegemite which I actually ate this morning. To get the idea of what vegemite is like try to imagine this: an English muffin or bread with a thin coating of butter and then on top drop soy sauce. That is similar to what it tastes like. But other than the Vegemite, the food is pretty much comparable to whatever you could find the US. Lots of fish and chicken (more so than beef). In the neighborhood where we are staying we found a little lunch sort of place called Charcoal Charlie’s they have about 6 different varieties of chicken as well as these absolutely delicious scalloped potatoes. They do have supermarkets here, but they are not super in the American sense. They don’t sell everything all in one place. There are pharmacies, real butcher shops, bakeries and wine shops ect…but they seem co located, so you could get everything you need all at once but you’d have to go to maybe 4 or 5 stores. We hit a shopping mall yesterday, the stores are pretty much the same as what you’d see in the US or Europe, but the food court is another matter. You don’t find “fast food” and junk here in the mall food court (at least not in the mall we were in). We found a cool little Japanese place where Charlie got some sushi and I got some awesome shimp tempura thing and shrimp wrapped in rice paper that was so good.

The people all look the same as at home. The language of course is the same except for all the local accent things like “g’day” and “no worries.” The clothes are depressingly, the exact same crap you see in the US. No shortage of slightly overweight 40 year old women with jeans cut so low, that you have see nasty plumber situations every time they sit down. Just like home.

Our hotel is situated right on Bondi Beach. Our room overlooks the beach. The water is a gorgeous azure blue. One imagines that when it is calm it might look like the Caribbean water. But calm water is something I think Bondi Beach sees little of. This is a world renown surfing beach, and the swells can be huge. We were watching some surfers this morning who got tossed so high in the air by the waves we wondered if they would survive. It was incredible and unfortunately there was no way to get a picture of it.

Things here, for as similar as they are to home, as a bit off, but just slightly. Take the sports. We are sharing out hotel with a rugby team, called the Cowboys. They apparently lost their game yesterday and there was an epic “let’s drink our sorrows away” party that was going full swing at 7:30 this morning when we left our room to go get breakfast. And another thing that is just slightly off, on the beach we saw a bird eating a fish that washed up. Yes you read that correctly: A bird, one individual bird. In CA or NJ there would be 50 flying rats vying for the same fish, but here this one lucky little seagull got to enjoy a quiet breakfast until some obnoxious tourist disturbed him. (The picture above was taken from the balcony in our room.)

Trip to Australia

Hello all,



I have not posted to this blog since our family trip to the American wilderness this past summer. However we have another major trip and I am going to keep everyone updated on this blog. Tonight at 10:20pm Los Angeles time, Charlie and I board a plane for Sydney Australia. Meagan is graduating from high school and we are attending her graduation on the 25th. We will be gone for a week.



Paula will be watching the kids during the week, and on the weekend various family members will be watching the kids for us. We are thankful that all of them are willing to pitch in an make this trip possible for us.



I have never been this far away before, so it should be really exciting. We are staying at a nice hotel on Bondi Beach. It is only spring there, so it won't really be good beach weather, but we will at least be able to walk on the beach each day. We are looking forward to waking up late each day, having long leisurely meals, site seeing and shopping.