We’ve been home from Australia for over a week now.  Haven’t felt much like writing or much of anything else, for that matter.  In an email to Marcus, I likened the feeling to that of Buffy the Vampire Slayer after she got killed and then magicked back to life again, finding that she liked it a whole lot better in Heaven, and that she’s rather perturbed at being back with all those burdens and responsibilities again.  Australia is my Heaven, apparently.

Been pretty jetlagged after flying home.  Getting over netlag as well; it’s good to be connected once again. Seriously, the netlag was harder on me than the jetlag was.  I think I have a problem.

It’s been hard to sleep in this new timezone; midnight comes and goes without the slightest tiredness, and I’ve been consistently sleeping very late as a consequence.  Going to Australia wasn’t much of a problem in the jetlag department, but coming home was significantly worse.  I guess late-night sleeplessness leaves me more time to spend with Jessica Fletcher.  (It’s not cheating if she’s fictional, old, and just solving mysteries with me, right?)

I’ve been tinkering around with website stuff here and there.  For several days after my return, whenever iPhone would check its “gps” position, it would occasionally return a latitude and longitude of 0.  This had the effect of centering the map up at the top of nyquil.org near to the Louvre in France.  I may have just traveled from the other side of the world, but I assure you, France was not on the trip.  In any case, if ever you need to know the coordinates required to blow up the Louvre with ICBMs, just put zero in for each; that’ll be close enough for horseshoes and ICBMs.  I’ve not got my map-moving script ignoring any position updates of lat/lon 0/0.  This may come back to haunt me if I ever decide to visit the Louvre, but I’m not planning any such trip any time soon.

Since returning home after spending scads of dollars — both American and Australian — over the last few weeks, we’ve been tightening our belts with some budgeting.  This involves much less eating out, and significantly more cooking at home.  This is something we’ve needed to do anyway, it’s just so gosh-darned hard to get motivated.  Being broke is great motivation.  I’ve been trying all sorts of interesting things with relative success, so I may have to resurrect Cooking With Kooks.

Dear Australia:  I miss you.

Man, if there was ever any doubt as to how much of a geek I am, it’s pretty much settled now. Dave and Ben are attempting to teach D how to surf, whilst I’m sitting here on the beach blogging. All the bikini-clad sheilas are undoubtedly checking out the fully clothed pasty geek hunched over his tiny green toy laptop typing away furiously. I can tell that they want me.

I’m not much of a swimmer and thusly am not much of an enthusiast of water sports, but I have to admit that it looks like fun. I never really liked swimming much in the first place, but after nearly drowning around the same time my man-boobs began to come in, I abandoned it altogether. I told them that I probably wouldn’t be going out, but my resolve is weakening. They did bring a lycra surf top thingy, though… that might both suppress the man-boobs and protect my pasty white torso from the sun’s harmful rays…

Oh, look’s like they’re headed back in, so mayhap I’ll give it a go.

Oh man. Surfing is fun. And tiring. I’m positively knackered after only about an hour or so of learning. I managed to get to my feet a few times — which balances out the few times I completely nose-dived into the wave, coming up sputtering and red-eyed. I only mowed over two children in the process, but don’t worry: the little tykes were waaay too good at surfing and deserved it for showing us all up. Cheeky little blighters.

Ben and Dave left me a board, so I may give it another go tomorrow morning before brekkie. Surfing before brekkie. I think I’m fitting in here rather well.

We have to leave in just over two days, which — despite this being the longest holiday upon which I’ve ever been and that I’m usually ready to head home right away — makes me a very sad panda. It’s been less than two weeks and I’ve already adopted much of the lingo, the dress, the laid-back attitude and even the disdain for American culture. (Did you know that Americans don’t like beet-root on their hamburgers? That’s complete lunacy!) I even enjoyed the heck out of the ham in my eggs Florentine yesterday. Now I just have to figure out a way to move here permanently some day, because it’s clear that I was born in the wrong part of the world.

This post is beginning to reach the epic length all mine have been as of late and I lack the time to make it shorter, so I’ll go ahead and bid you farewell once again.

We did indeed go to the Torranga Zoo the other day, seeing all manner of unique Australian animals and regular old run-of-the-mill zoo animals as well. Curiously, among all the crazy animals I’d never seen before was a neat network of waterways which allowed these giant koi to swim unfettered throughout the whole park. At every exhibit there was some crazy marsupial to gaze upon, but there I’d be, snapping pics of the koi and generally being enamored with them. I guess I like koi.

In addition to waterways, one other feature pervaded most of the park: trees and shrubbery. In Australia, trees and shrubs mean spiders; all it would take is a casual glance around and one would see gigantic webs, pretty much everywhere. Most of said webs were both slightly above head-height AND filled with the kind of spiders about which American spiders have nightmares.

(In fact, I’ve decided to rename “nightmares” to “night’nids.” I just seems more appropriate; I don’t care how scary some horse is — it’s just a freakin’ horse. We’re talking about spiders who routinely eat BIRDS. Show me a horse that eats birds and I’ll gladly change it back to “nightmares.” If you could make a note of this and begin changing your usage, I’d be much obliged.)

The few webs NOT containing spiders were somewhat comforting, of-times causing one to exhale with relief. Until, that is, you realize that a spider-less web means that you HAVE NO IDEA WHERE THE SPIDER IS. Throughout the park, pretty much the only place that DIDN’T have trees and shrubs was in the giraffe habitat. At first I thought this was because the giraffes eat all the plants, but then I realized that it was because giraffes are bloody expensive and the zoo-keepers don’t want to have to replace them every time a spider goes and eats one.

Alas, the uploading of images didn’t go as well as I was hoping, but one half-way decent shot of a spider made it up before the wifi and my OLPC gave out. The rest may have to wait ‘til I get home. Without further ado, here’s payment for sitting through my blather:

This guy is big enough to wrap his legs around a kiwi-fruit. See? “Night’nids,” right?

Erik tells me that these spiders kill many motorists a year — not by biting them, mind you, but instead by simply hiding behind vehicle sun-visors, waiting for the driver to casually flip it down. At this point, the motorist can’t help but see the spider, whose simple presence terrifies them into driving off the road. This is a story I believe, because the first one I saw about made me go off the path I was on and into the crocodile pit just to avoid walking under it. Better the crocs than those spiders, I say.

Check your visors. And your underwear.

Yesterday was D’s first day of work for the folks who make Campaign Monitor, leaving me free to spend the whole day however I’d like. Yesterday I took a stroll down to the waterfront and took some more ‘artistic,’ less-‘touristy’-type photos — or, more accurately, attempted to. It’s just too nice here to be focusing on the minutae that usually makes up my style.

I’m hoping to upload a few more pics this afternoon, but my hopes for better wifi at our beach-front hotel did not come to fruition. Turns out, it’s $5 for fifteen minutes here, compared with $5 an hour at the Sydney hotel. Lucky for us, another kind soul has an open access point within range of our super-wifi equipment, meaning I can still be somewhat connected. (Arg. Hang on; I’m drying off on the balcony after my morning shower and fear that I’m beginning to burn. I best put some clothes on. OK.) When we inevitably move here some day, we’re going to have open wifi with a little paypal tip jar or something. It’s way too hot here in the direct sun, so I’m going to head down to the water to write down there. See you in 5.

Boy, I’m sure glad I opted to bring my OLPC; the battery life and daylight-readable screen are both fantastic. I can’t imagine trying to sit on a bench and write with a normal laptop, so I’m really glad I got one of these while I had the chance. If it weren’t for having to constantly stop and tell people all about this cute little machine that they can’t possibly buy anyway, it’d be a machine perfectly suited to freelance writers. Maybe I should become one.

I’ve now got the ocean breeze at my back, surrounded by the cries of hungry birds — irate that no one is giving them anything to eat — and the sound of a gurgling fountain that looks entirely too much like the head of a giant stone penis, dribbling out fluid from exactly where you’d expect if you were familiar at all with penises. (Penii?) Appropriately enough, the sculpture is entited ‘The Seed.’ I’ll snap some pics of it for your reference.

Speaking of birds: the gulls here seem to be of a different sort than I’m accustomed to seeing in the states; they’re leaner, more muscular and slightly smaller. Yesterday I took pics of one in particular who had staked out an area as being his, violently ruffling his feathers and screaming when any other gull dared enter his space. This was aggravated when some kind soul (me) donated a found Nutella sandwich to them. This bossy gull spent the whole time chasing all the other gulls away from his sandwich that he failed to notice as two smaller black birds devoured the whole thing. He defended the sandwich for at least ten minutes, throughout which time he didn’t even have one bite. I suspect he might be an American tourist.

Oh yeah: if you’d like to see the area in which I’m currently sitting, I shot a silly little video with the OLPC’s webcam yesterday morning whilst air-drying on my balcony. It’ll be the sort of greenish, blocky area towards the left side of the blocky screen. Note the .au in that url; it got there automatically :)

It took a few meals, but I’ve decided that my American taste buds are not particularly pleased with the flavor of pork in Australia; I can’t really describe the difference, but I suspect it may be due in part to the lack of copious amounts of seasonings and preservatives (and hormones) that American meat producers include in everything. I’ve tried bacon, link sausage, and now a Sausage McMuffin with Egg from McDonalds, and it just doesn’t quite sit right with me. I had an interesting turkish pastry-thing yesterday with ‘mince’ in it, which I suspect to be a ground pork product because of the same odd flavor which I found initially curious and eventually off-putting. I believe this to be the first occurance of something that I’ve found that I think is ‘better’ in America. Oh, ‘tomato sauce’ was the first. It’s not quite ketchup, in that it’s sweeter and doesn’t seem to contain any vinegar, and it does not do to chips what ketchup does to fries in the states. Adding insult to injury, Heinz actually sells ‘tomato sauce’ here rather than ketchup.

There are countless things that are better here, though. The soft drinks in particular are fantastic, probably in large part to the inclusion of sugar rather than corn syrup. Delish. There are a variety of different soft drinks that I’m really going to miss when we have to leave, most notably being Coca-Cola’s ‘Lift,’ and to a lesser extent, the ‘Solo’ range of beverages. I’ve searched in vain for Marcus’s‘s New Zealand favorite ‘J&L,’ but both ‘Lift’ and ‘Solo’ taste remarkably similar to how he described it. As dissimilar as they’d like to appear, I guess Aussies and Kiwis share a fondness for lemon drink that I wish Americans would develop as well.

In conversations with experienced people before our trip, the one thing everyone recommended was Arnott’s ‘Tim Tam’ biscuits, so I popped ‘round the corner shop and purchased several varieties. Those are some bloody wonderful biscuits, but I have to say my heart lies more in all the other varieties of biscuits that Arnott’s sells. The ‘Spiced Fruit Roll’ is particularly wonderful, though difficult to describe. Imagine a ‘Fig Newton,’ but with a slightly pretzel-like (in consistency) toasted shell around it that your teeth crunch through before getting into the softer ‘mantle,’ and that the filling is not fig, but instead currants, raisins, orange zest and the same types of spices you’d find in mince (not the pork kind) pies in the U.S. and U.K. I suspect that we are going to need to acquire some more luggage with which we’ll bring a several year supply back with us.

Speaking of raisins, here they are apparently frequently called ‘sultanas’ or ‘saltanas’ or something rather similar to that, requiring a creative renaming of a familiar product. Kellogg’s ‘Raisin Bran’ becomes Kellogg’s ‘Sultana Bran.’ Other more inexplicable renamings include Kellogg’s ‘Rice Bubbles’ rather than the familiar (to this American) Kellogg’s ‘Rice Krispies.’ I’m not entirely sure what ‘krispies’ denote here, but I suspect it might be the turds that cling to the ass-end off a sheep. For brekkie this morning I had a cereal that LOOKED for all the world like the krispies on the ass-end of a sheep, but tasted really wonderful, especially as the milk soaked in.

Oh: remember how I was initially weirded out by spinach at brekkie? Well, since then I’ve eaten a number of traditional Aussie brekkies featuring things such as gigantic sauteed mushrooms and roasted tomatoes (toe maaah toe), and ‘hand sliced’ thick white toast, which, apparently, is the greatest thing here since sliced bread; many cafes proudly advertise that their toast is hand sliced. It is all delightful, especially the roasted tomato and mushrooms. Also, these Aussies sure know how to poach an egg; that’s enough right there to keep me here. Aside from the copious amounts of pork in most traditional brekkies, I’m in love with Aussie fare. I’ll fit right in.

Since being here, I’ve developed what can only be described as ‘a bit of a coffee addition’. I’ve fallen in love with what they call a ‘flat white,’ which is a small shot of espresso and a big cup of steamed milk. I usually add a dollop of honey to that and I’m good to just sit and drink it. Just talking about it now is making me want to go grab one. Alright, hang on a tick, I’m going.

Ok, back. So one other thing I really like about things here, is that cafes usually have different pricing for ‘eat-in’ vs ‘take-away,’ and there is no tipping anywhere. They actually pay the staff a good wage, charging the customer accordingly if they’re going to have to be minded and/or cleaned-up-after. That’s exactly the way I think it should be. Mr. Pink would be really happy here, had things worked out differently for him. Also, portions are smaller, and there are no refills on soft drinks. D doesn’t care much for the latter, but as one who rarely drinks more than one serving, I’m tired of paying for everyone else’s refills. Better for me is better all ‘round right?

Prices here in Cronulla (a perfectly cromulent name for a town) are a bit more manageable than those in downtown Sydney. I just paid $3.50 for a large takeaway flat white, which is what I’d imagine Starbucks in the states would charge. Meals out are still pretty spendy due to being right on the sea in tourist territory, but my knocking about during the day isn’t racking up quiet the cost that it would have were I doing it in Sydney. It’s a lot cooler here as well, and the crowds less crowdy. I’d gladly be exiled here by the British constabulary.

With that, I’ll bid you fare well for now. Next time: spiders.

A couple brief things I keep forgetting about whilst recounting adventures:

I know there is much anticipation for my verdict re: ‘coreolis effect’ on toilets, but I don’t have much empirical evidence to report. All the toilets I’ve encountered are what I’ve dubbed “Chicago-style,” (deep dish) and don’t actually swirl much at all. A jet of water drops straight into the very deep bowl, and it all whooshes away without any perceivable rotation at all. I did encounter one in at a sushi restaurant last night that appeared to swirl ever-so-slightly clock-wise after the jet settled out, but I confess to forgetting to observe the rotation in the northern hemisphere; i’ve no idea whether this confirms what folklore purports or debunks it. What IS interesting, though, is the push-butto flush mechanism on all the toilets: each toilet has two flush buttons; one large and one small. This led me to believe that one is for ‘number one’ and the larger for ‘number two,” but having rpeatedly alternated betwixt the two on several different toilets (bloody Americans, don’t they know there’s a drought on?) I’ve not been able to tell the difference.

Our hotel has an ingenious power-saving device that I think needs to become standard at alll hotels: Upon entering your room, you side your special key fob into a receptacle near the door which then activates the lights and thermostat. As soon as one removes the key fob, everything shuts off. Since you need your key to get back in, this ensures that Americans can’t waste power unless they are IN the room.

Lastly, in lieu of mints on our pillows, our hotel leaves fortune cookies. Players of the ‘between the sheets/in bed’ fortne cookie game may be particularly amused by this.