Sydney Aroma Festival

Sydney-siders lover their coffee.



How do I know this? Because I just came back from the Sydney Aroma Festival. This was a big outdoor event showcasing the best of Sydney's and the World's spices, sauces, treats, and most importantly, coffee. There was Turkish coffee, Columbian coffee, native organic coffee, European coffee, Indonesian coffee, and even coffee suitable to recreate the iconic image of Marilyn Monroe seen above. It seemed as if nearly half the booths were focused on some niche coffee region or product.

The end result of all this is Sydney has some great coffee and cafes. Even I, the reluctant coffee drinker, have taken to enjoying the serenity of sitting down at a sidewalk cafe, in the afternoon sun, to enjoy a good ,long black*.

*Yes, if you look hard enough, you'll notice many things sound vaguely racist. Future post about this coming.

Witnessed Yesterday in Work Bathroom, 7PM

Bro shaving at the sink.

He had the toothbrush and toothpaste out as well. So basically this dude was doing all his personal grooming at work.

Now I can understand the brushing of teeth, especially after you just ate, but shaving? C'mon Son! This is work! Not your newly renovated bathroom at home with the his and hers sinks.

Or maybe it's because your missus kicked you out of the house and you can't use your sink with the nice marble finishings. Maybe it's because you're living at the office now. Was that vacation tryst with the 17-year-old waitress worth it? Probably not.

The worst part? He was using the middle sink of three. Can't even distance myself from his physical and moral filth.

Ultimate Game #3

Stats:
* ?+/-: Forgot to track it this week, but I only personally got scored on once. Like white on rice, Baby.
* 1 Score: Could have been at least 2 more if I had the hand-eye coordination to catch anything on a dead run. Or catch anything in general.
* 0 Assists
* 3 Turnovers: I really need to learn how to throw.
* 3 Sick D's: Including one where I wasn't even looking for the disk, but read my mark's eyes and went up when his hands went up, knocking away the disk before he could get position.
* 1 injured shoulder: On one of the diving D's, landed on the same shoulder I dislocated. The day after, I can't lift it past 45-degrees. Yay?

The New Taste Sensation!

So far as I have found, Australians have very strange tastes with regards to their snack foods. I've had the chance to sample those that are stocked in the office micro-kitchens. In addition to the obscure tastes I have seen before, such as "salt and vinegar", I have also found some surprising combinations of food coloring, artificial flavors, and fried potato/corn starch.

- Chicken flavored Samboy: Imagine those chicken bouillon cubes you use to easily make broth. Take those, grind them up into a powder, than sprinkle it over potato chips.

- Burger Rings: Because you want your sides to taste like your mains! Wait, you do? They are like onion rings, but at least onion rings started off as an organic product grown from the earth. These things are an affront to nature.

Not to say all the food in our micro-kitchens is foreign to me. Cadburys Chocolates translates fairly well and my fat kid instincts can still find the good stuff.

Happiness = Reality - Expectation

Q.E.D. Someone check my math though.

Beach Day!

Some pics.

Note: This is the middle of winter in Sydney.

Life is good.

Injuries Sustained Playing Pickup Basketball

I am now 3-for-3 in getting injured playing pickup basketball:

* Took a charge on the baseline. A lowered shoulder into the rib cage. Damage: bruised ribs - stiff for 3 weeks, bruised ego because he was probably 16 - permanent.

* Outfought for a rebound. Took a hip check into the groin. Collapsed immediately. Damage: Family Jewels - functional ability yet to be assessed.

* Played three consecutive full-court 5-on-5 games after at least 5 half-court 4-on-4 games. Severe cramp in lower leg upon diving for a loose ball. Damage: Sore calf muscle for the last three days.

Holy fuck I'm getting dumber.

[UPDATE] I just did 10 minutes of math to prove to myself I haven't gone brain-dead. Where is the O-Dog when I need him. "Cal-coo-lus? What's cal-coo-lus?"

Tonight at pub quiz at the Harlequin Hotel, I was stumped to find the temperature at which Fahrenheit and Celsius are equal.

I finally got the answer by drawing each on a graph, then trying to guesstimate and substituting the point they intersect.

But it's just a very simple simultaneous equation:

F = 9/5C + 32
F = C

Fuck. I feel really, really stupid right now. My only saving grace is that I did get this when many people didn't.

Review:

While I eagerly await Yelp!'s arrival in Australia, here is my review of a random pub:

Place: Glasgow Arms Hotel

Neighborhood: Ultimo

Food: Chinese. Decent enough attached restaurant. I had a surprisingly good and generously porportioned beef and Chinese broccoli. ~$12-15 / main.

Uncommon Beers on Tap: Reschs, decent enough darker lager/pislner. Ended up switching back to Coopers. ~$5 a beer.

Clientèle: Mostly locals. Fairly empty.

Ambiance: Clean, well lit. Pool table. A few TVs with the football on.

Rating: 4/5

Comments: My local. I could definitely see myself coming back here for a quiet meal or a couple of brews. Although not if I wanted some traditional pub food.

Quoting Phone Numbers

So I was reading THE BEST BLOG ON THE INTERWEBS and it was talking about how people get so used to quoting phone numbers in the US as XXX YYY ZZ-ZZ or XXX YYY ZZZZ for (Area Code) / three digits / last four digits, that you can get confused if you change up the cadence at all.

Well as the Aussies like to say, "Fuck your cadence!"*

All phone numbers are: 0# #### ####

The first digit is the region code. New South Wales is 02, Queensland is 03, etc. All mobiles are 04. If you are calling internationally, you drop the 0, i.e. +614XXXXYYYY.

However, when quoting these numbers, it's all shot to hell. If there are no consecutive digits (two sixes, three sevens, etc.) then you say:

"0### ### ###"

If there is a consecutive repeated digit anywhere in the number, you change it to:

"0## Double X ## ###" or "0# Double X # Double Y ####"

If there is a triple:

"0# Triple X ## ####" or "0# # Triple X Triple Y #"

Quads:

"0# # Double X Double X ####"

And there are special numbers like "13 13 31" which are just quoted like that.

And when calling in territory, i.e. NSW->NSW, you don't even dial the 02. So:

"### Double X ###"

This is so common that when I quote my number the rational way, because it has two sets of doubles, people don't get it. Trying to convert my number into a proper cadence in my head is very hard.

Maybe Aussies are just smarter than we are.


*Not really. I have yet to be cursed out by an Aussie. Still trying.

My First Yoga Class

I ran home and am writing this even before I've showered because I'm still so deeply centered. Or something.

"I know you can be overwhelmed, and you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?"

That's how I feel about yoga. It was no harder than I anticipated it to be, given I have poor balance, zero hand-eye coordination, and all the spiritual maturity of a baby squirrel. It was fun enough for me to want to keep at it. And since it's included in my gym membership, why not?

As I was cutting out all distractions, I did discover a vein in my left foot that pulsates with every heartbeat. It's like one of those animatronic contraptions. Very freaky.

Also, I'm fairly certain the yoga instructor at the ITAC is just making up words as she goes along. Maybe she doesn't know what I'm supposed to be doing either, so it's better to just invent things on the spot.

Logical Disconnect

Verizon Wireless is a subsidiary of Verizon, a communications company. Their products include mobile phone plans. Phones, the technology to allow you to communicate over long distances.

(Insert Logical Disconnect here)

You cannot transfer a plan to a pre-paid account because Verizon Wireless cannot accept payments over the phone.

:: Face palm. ::

YouTube's Life in a Day

Do this. Tell me about it. I can win stuff.

On Relative Speeds of Swimmers in the Slow Lane at ITAC

Things I am faster than:
- Dude doing half-doggy paddle, who I had to pass this morning.
- Lifeguard, who is purposefully doing a lateral shuffle along the edge of the pool.

Things I am not faster than:
- Overweight woman power-walking in the lane next to me.

At least this is progress from last week when a child's abandoned flotation device was drifting circles around me.

Australia's National Symbols [UPDATE]

The other animal, holding up the other half of Australia's crest is the emu. Also there because it cannot go backwards. As the saying goes, both animals cannot retreat, thus the crest shall remain aloft.

However, at Featherdale Wildlife Park, I saw with my own eyes an emu going backwards. Directly backtracking rather nimbly, I might add.

This proves the other adage I've since learned in Australia, Australians don't let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Beauty and the Geek...Australia!

No, the title does not refer to any pathetic attempt on my part to woo a buxom Aussie broad, but instead to this show.

First, a confession. I loved the first US season of Beauty and the Geek. Amazeballs. It's a veritable train wreck of humanity captured for our amusement. Usually reality shows go through the motions to mask their pre-defined stereotype contestants and character cut-outs, but this show wallowed in it; they advertised one of the geeks as a "Computer Programmer" which you may as well translate into "Burned His Penis Trying to Impregnate His USB Port". I also knew I would have killed on that show given that I have enough geek in me to have taught some air-head blonde how to assemble a computer, but also enough passing knowledge of Us Weekly to tell you who Tony Romo is dating on any given week.

And this isn't even good US TV the Aussies decided to import. I mean this show was the the CW (nee WB). The CW! That's barely network!

Things I love about this show, so far:

How amazing is the front-page image for this show?

Give that guy a broken Chinese-Australian accent and BOOM! $$$...er...AU$AU$AU$

And the rest of these geeks. You couldn't have cast a better set of misfits. It's like what you find in the clip-art gallery under "socially retarded."

The beauties? Only two of them have what you would call "real jobs." And I'll bet you at least five of them have serious daddy issues. You don't develop glamor poses like those with healthy childhoods!

So, how excited was I when I found out via an email thread at work not only one, they are doing a second season, but two, one of the geeks had to drop out "at the last minute and they need a replacement. Fast." I immediately began devising ways I could make it on the show. Perhaps if I masked my American accent with broken Changlish? What if I got coke-bottle glasses and told them I blogged obsessively because my only friends were online*?

Alas, I gave up these dreams when I took a moment and realized since they sent out this message at work, I wouldn't even make it out of the office in terms of candidate selection. I thought my office back in the US was bad, but this Sydney office? Wow. Like if you took every 7th grade chess club in the world and put them into the engineering department here.

Anyways, it's good to know Aussies, for as much as they regard Americans as dumb, ignorant cousins, still love everything about us. That ensures I'll always have entertaining and familiar TV to veg out to.

*wait...

Featherdale Wildlife Park

On this past 4th of July, some of my housemates and I ventured out of the city to go play with the animals at Fetherdale Wildlife Park. This is a nice place, and totally worth the $6.40 bus fare plus $11.50 discounted ticket I paid to go there.

We saw lots of really cool and stereotypically Australian beasts like
Koalas,

Kangaroos,

Wombats,

Koalas,

Tasmanian Devils (who really are energetic, whirling dervishes),

and more Koalas (seriously, this place was pimping Koalas like it was good business)

Here are the rest of the photos: http://chinahouseproductions.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=9393

Also some videos:





One more thing: On the bus ride to the park, I met two girls from Alabama, currently going to law school in Australia. They discovered I was an American when I said I was going to spend the 4th of July "barbecuing burgers, drinking Budwisers, watching NASCAR, and shooting things." They seemed to identify with this. 'Merica!

Interesting Day

A bunch of stuff that I wanted to lump together today because creating separate posts is a lot of work.

- I explored the Sydney Fish Market today. It's surprisingly close to my apartment. I'm psyched because it's extremely fresh seafood, with quite a few places that will cook it for you on the spot. There's also a few specialty cooking shops. Also, there are pelicans.


Pelicans are:
1. Huge, larger than the small children it threatened to eat.
2. Patient, waiting in the same spot for over an hour for scraps.
3. Not gonna move out of the way for your tiny European car, Bro. Good luck with that.

- While exploring, I have a terrible habit of looking at everything except what's directly in front of me. This is good for pretending to be a wide-eyed tourist, exploring the city. This is not so good for avoiding obstacles. Like the 3ft tall parking pole I ran into. I ran into it full on and about as un-glamorously as possible, doubling over and reaching out to brace myself from falling.

It may be all the World Cup matches I'm watching, but I'm fairly certain I theatrically feigned an injury and demanded a yellow card.

- In this market, while checking out a cooking implements store akin to Sur la Table, I walked around a corner and stood facing a middle-aged woman holding a foot-long pepper grinder, who asked "It's not big enough, is it?" Clearly this was meant for her husband who was standing just behind me. Now, in this situation do I:

A.) Go about my way, like a mature adult, minding his own business.
B.) Titter like a school girl.
C.) Yell out, "That's what she said!"

Today, I chose B, but the first syllable of "That" was audibly heard coming from someone matching my description.

A Conversation.

Zed of 2 Months Ago: You know, since I'm getting all my relocation paid for, why not take everything with me. What else am I gonna do with my textbooks and old clothes?

Zed of Today: Fuck you, Zed! Fuck you and your dumb non-thinking ass! Are you fucking serious? Do you fucking know how fucking long it takes to fucking unpack and put away all that fucking shit? What the fuck are you even going to do with it all?

Zof2MA: Really? How much stuff could I have? I am selling all my larger furniture and I've already gotten rid of a lot of stuff: clothes I never wear, DVDs, and most electronics.

ZoT: You fucking packed up chargers and adapters for devices you no longer own. You fucking shipped three sets of bed linens that had to be thrown away because they were so fucking old. You fucking dragged text books that are so out of date, you can't even donate them to the public library. Also, if you ever decide to buy another fucking coat hanger, I will fucking strangle you with it. You have more fucking coat hangers than Macy's.

Zof2MA: I'm looking forward to getting my own place, with a lot of space to stretch out. Most importantly, I'm going to grow beyond buying all my furniture from Ikea. It's time to grow up and have nice things!

ZofT: But you didn't fucking get your own fucking place did you? You didn't even get a fucking unfurnished apartment. So you had to fucking cram all of the Ikea furniture you brought anyways into a pre-furnished room full of Ikea stuff. You live in a fucking Ikea show room.

Zof2MA: It's a fresh start! Only going to take what's most important to me.

ZofT: Really. That fucking decibel meter you bought and never used. The one you were going to use to show up the shitty fuck neighbors you had from fucking two houses ago. Really.

Zof2MA: Australia, here I come!

ZofT: Next time when I move, I'm going to set fire to everything I own. Fuck.