Sydney, New Apartment, Mardi Gras

I flew into Sydney after a heavy storm had recently cleared. The plane rolled hard to the right for the approach and I, with a window seat, took in a birds-eye view of my new city for the first time. Suburban sprawl bled into denser residential housing into light commercial buildings and finally into jutting skyscrapers at the center. Brooklyn Bridge-esque sandstone towers anchored the north Sydney suburbs to the heart of the city and in between lay the Sydney Harbor bustling with ferries and sail boats. The Sydney Opera House -- smaller than I expected but catching the eye like a diamond -- conspicuously glistened in the clean, post-storm gleam of the setting sun. Talk about a grand first impression.

I had spent a lot of time looking at Sydney from Google maps, and roughly deduced the plane's location. I was quick enough to realize I was probably looking at a commercial building that would soon be my haunt eight hours a day, five days a week, for the next six months. What would my life be like here? What does Sydney have to offer?

I took a double-decker train from the airport to CBD (central business district), and then a bus to the apartment I had found from Gumtree searches when I was still in Perth. I met my quirky home owners, Maurice (ex-pat, British, age 63, semi-retired, slightly obsessive compulsive) and Alice (age 45, Chinese immigrant, hairdressing shop owner, chatty and fiery). They introduced me to my room in the detached in-law flat I'd be sharing with a Chinese university student. When I say detached flat, I mean a renovated garage. Unsurprisingly, the kitchen was outside under a covered patio. I sat outside with the owners as we got to know each other, and a rat ran across the one of the beams of the pergola. Alice exclaimed in stilted English, "I never seen that before!" One hour into my short-term lease and I was sure I needed to find a new place sooner than later.

During the first night, I was disturbed intermittently by some sort of rodent scampering in the ceiling. It didn't take much to imagine what sort of rodent it would be. I brought this up to Alice the next evening, and she said curly-tailed possums are notorious for nesting in ceilings, but they aren't a big problem. Okay, whatever. I started my search for a new apartment that evening. A few evenings later, while I sat at my desk, I heard scampering directly above the ceiling. A piece of the drywall spackle fell away from the edge where the ceiling mated with the wall. I looked up to see a dark brown rat tail hanging down from the hole. Yeah, try to fall asleep with that image in your mind. Good luck.

This time, when I told Alice, she listened. The next day she installed an ultra-sonic rat alarm, which surprisingly worked, and they had a contractor stop by to quote a price to fix the problem permanently. Fortunately for me, I had been proactive in finding a new apartment, and would move into my new place by the end of the second week of work.

Fast forward five days. (Whitney Houston died. The owners bicker about petty things. Every night, Whitney Houston music plays on a stereo system through a blown speaker).

With little fan-fair on a Friday after work, I packed my boxes and backpack, and hailed a cab to take me to my new row house apartment in the inner-city suburb of Surry Hills. (The cabi's licence was alpha-numeric and there were no dice in the mirror. He was from Bangladesh, if you were curious). I had only visited this part of the city once, which was during the room showing on a late night weekday. Now, on a bustling Friday early evening, I got to see it in a new light. Night clubs were setting up for the weekend debauchery and trendy clothing stores were closing down. A small number of street-level shops had seedy looking neon signs in front of inconspicuous staircases. Bars, cafe's and restaurants were full of people of all ages enjoying society. While I'm painting you a picture with words, there seemed to be a noticeable amount of well groomed men wearing tight fitting clothing and speaking in flamboyant accents.

Jason welcomed me with a formal tour of the house. He had taken care of everything so I could move right in: clean room, clean bed sheets, a shelf in the closet for shoes (and yes, I need a full shelf), cabinet for my food, two shelves in the frig, and a cabinet in the bathroom for toiletries. He suggested I unpack and then offered a tour of the essential shops nearby. So I did just that. As I learned the location of two grocery stores, Salvation Army, straight clubs, gay clubs, liquor stores for wine, liquor stores for beer, and bus stops, I got to know my new roommate better (I also live with a French guy and his Thai girlfriend).

During the house showing I had learned that Jason is from Malaysia, he's gay and works as an accountant in the city. While walking around the street, he laughed at me as I asked him if Surry Hills had a large gay community. He basically said Surry Hills is the heart of it. Sydney seems to be is a very gay friendly city though.

At some point during that walk, Jason asked me if I wanted to join him and some friends in the Mardi Gras. I agreed then basically out of a principle that my friend in Perth once put to words regarding living in a Western country like a traveler: Say yes to all new opportunities, because they usually end up being great experiences. Well, the Mardi Gras parade was one of those things I didn't feel comfortable with -- not because I assumed I'd be dressed in a hyper-skimpy outfit in public (which is really the best part) -- but because thousands of people would be intently watching each float that goes by and secondly, the parade was being broadcast internationally. With a debilitating fear of being the center of public attention, I'd have been equally as nervous as a driver of a float.

Between that Friday and the next Saturday, I got ready for the parade. First, Jason mentioned that he liked to style hair, and I mentioned that I liked to get free haircuts. When my trendy haircut was all finished, he gave me styling tips for how to use gel. Then he looked at my patchy chest hair, waved an open hand in the general area, and said, "You're gonna have do something with all this before the parade." Two days later he was shaving my chest and giving me instructions on how to do it without getting ingrown hairs. There was one night during the week where I met Jason's friends and we brainstormed about costumes trying to incorporate the float theme colors of red, white and black.

The float theme was "Muslims Against Homophobia". I mentioned this to a few people, and if they didn't say it out loud, then I read it in their faces: Um, are you crazy? I assumed they were trying to estimate about how many people in the world hated me. I would then have to explain that the float needed volunteers and, depending on how hard the guy was coming onto me, that I was neither. Anyway, I personally preferred our sign that read "Queer Muslims Need Acceptance". That's a message a little easier on the ears.

On the morning of the parade, I walked to the Asian market and picked through some of the women's clothing stores. I found some white daisy duke shorts, and striped white-and-red socks. I would pair that with suspenders I'd be borrowing and a star-print handkerchief.  Finally, I thought I'd paint on a lightning bolt over my eye a la Ziggy Stardust.

Jason's friends came over at 3pm and we spent the next 3 hours getting ready. My lightning bolt idea turned into a star to stick with the theme of the handkerchief and I added a few more in some risque places. Everyone else had rocked the color theme well.

The final product. The gay turned up to 11. 

From left to right, me (I'm the fat one), Jason, Florian (my other roommate, the florist), Susan, Yens, and Alan.  During the parade, everyone was cat calling for the two on the right. 

We arrived at the parade around 5pm but the first float didn't launch until 8pm. It had been overcast all day, and soon it was raining and cold. We were all a little under dressed, to say the least, and our float was scheduled for the last half of the parade. After a long time of huddling under a bus stop awning, the marching director of our float, a militant drag queen, arranged us in three's and two's and made us practice a dance routine to a Shakira remix. And then we were off.

At the back of the pack, anything resembling order quickly fell apart and we ended up free form dancing (well, you could call it dancing for the others; my technique is often classified as awkward shaking), waving, screaming, and running around to our adoring fans. It was pretty amazing how much warmer the street was when we got to the spot lights and big crowds (and the television cameras, which I ignored). The rain let up too, but I got the impression that the crowd was a little more subdued than previous years.

Forty-five minutes later, and it was over. There was an after party concert with RuPaul and Kylie Minogue, and we lost a few of our group. The remainder of us went out for Thai food in the Kings Cross area. The streets were a sea of people, but I would only be a spectator for the night. I was happy to have survived a very public event and have a set of friends for a unique welcome to Sydney.

The Abandoned Power Station

I mentioned a few months ago that Perth has adopted "graffiti" as a legitimate form of art. It is respected openly, people and companies dedicate space for artists, community projects make sure walls are updated and evolving, and its relatively prolific throughout the city.

This past weekend, as I was wrapping up my time in Perth, I made the short little trek down to South Fremantle / North Coogee Beach area. (By the way, "Coogee" is a fun word to say). This is the location of the abandoned power station, where artists have wall-to-wall graffiti'd this enormous structure. A co-worker had tipped off me that it is a worthwhile and intriguing visit if you like alternative types of sight-seeing, and with only a week left in Perth, I had few opportunities to do so.

Some of the artwork is really complex and detailed, while others are of the "tagging" variety. One of the more impressive things, which is mostly lost in a 2D picture, is the location of the artwork. Imagine painting a 2 meter by 4 meter piece from 20 meters up with only narrow, rusty scaffolding at your feet. Some locations boggled my mind even if the person used safety equipment. I have to imagine that some people must have died, or at least were seriously injured, in the history of making this place what it is today.

I'm not going to say much more than that. I've updated the link with all the pictures from the trip to the power station, and few more pics I snapped of graffiti elsewhere in the city. Below I've put my top favorite pictures (in no particular order) I took at the plant. I hope you enjoy the impressiveness of their artwork, whoever they are. All I did was simply take a picture.

I took this picture while exploring the empty lot adjacent to the power station, while trying to find a way in. 

Missing from this shot is the entire stairwell, which is pretty cool, but that picture didn't turn out well because it was so heavily backlit. 

If you can imagine it, this is a power station literally on the beach.  Nowadays, power stations are hidden away as best as possible and it seems unthinkable to put one on a beach. 

This picture really helps show the scale of the building and just how much artwork there is in the place. This is one of four sections of the entire complex. On the top level in this picture,  there is no floor or obvious access. Making art is hard enough when you're relaxed, but imagine being terrified.

A creepy hallway. I actually walked all the way through here. As I was a third of the way through, I heard the sound of a metal door hinge creaking... nearly lost it. I didn't have the guts to go into the basement where little natural light penetrations.

Here's a picture of the exterior that shows some of the interesting and difficult places people have managed to graffiti. 

This is my last blog post from Perth! 

A Wrench in the Plan

Things have been moving right along in the world. I came back from Vietnam essentially jobless and scraping the bottom of the barrel, but quickly found three hospitality jobs (there may be an inverse correlation between dollars in your bank account and eagerness to work) and then started working 8 to 12 hour a day routinely thereafter, often in split shifts which meant 18 hour days.

I knew I had a paycheck on the way, but I had caught the pay cycle at the wrong time, so was forced to wait another two weeks for relief. That sort of dragged a bit, but I actually enjoyed the challenge -- the idea of getting by on my own and seeing how far I can stretch my budget. For those two weeks I had my food budget to $25/week, which if you know Perth, is commendable. Fortunately, each of my jobs came with a free meal each day or night, so the more I worked, the less ramen noodle soup I had to eat. Talk about incentive.

In the meantime, on a whim, I decided that I'd do a search for an engineering job despite having unsuccessfully tried on-and-off for months. But there it was, on Seek.com, a company looking for someone with exactly my relevant experience from the pharmaceutical industry. It's like someone took my resume and then wrote a job description for me. I applied and heard back quickly, to my disappointment, that they wanted someone who could work seven months, but my visa restricted me to six months with any single employer. That for me was the figurative death knell. If an employer didn't want my expertise because of a one month difference in eligibility to work, then I was never going to find a professional job in Australia.

So I made plans, started figuring out a budget for when I'd have enough saved up to buy a ticket home and maybe a little extra for a quick tour of Oz. I set some fixed dates in my mind to quit my jobs between mid to end of March. I started preparing myself mentally to go home. While riding on the train to work each day, I starting make a playlist of songs with themes about "home" that I'd listen to for the epic flight to North America. I was working my ass off each day to make this happen, but it was good because I was ready. I wanted to go home finally. For all intents and purposes, I was going home. It was just a six week trip to make it there.

Well, maybe life wasn't ready for me to go home yet. The recruiter called me back and said the pharmaceutical company wanted to interview me after things didn't work out with other candidates. I arranged an interview for 6am Perth time (9am Sydney time where the interviewers were calling from), which was the only time to that fit into my work schedule of 8:30am to 4pm as a barista at a cafe, and 5:30pm to 10pm as a pizza cook. There were several interviews. Those were long days.

At the end of the second Skype interview, I got a call from the recruiter.
How do you think the interview went? 
It went really well, even better than the first one, I think.
That's great. Well, they felt the same way. They want to offer you the job! Isn't that exciting?
That's great. Yeah, I think it's a great opportunity, but I sort of had my mind set on heading home soon. I need a day to think about it.

There was noticeable disappointment in the recruiters reaction to my somewhat neutral response. Probably because I was threatening her paycheck after a commendable effort on her part to work with me actively (and no other recruiter did that for me here in Perth).

I got sorted for my day at work, which means wearing all black (shirt, pants, and shoes). I always feel like an undertaker as I make the trek into work -- when I wear my all black sunnies (aka sunglasses) I feel like an out of place jazz musician. By the time I got off the train I knew that the "correct" professional and financial decision was to take the job in Sydney but I didn't feel comfortable about it. I'm stubborn and changing my mind on big things usually takes a week or two. I only had a day, and the burden of the decision felt heavy on my shoulders.

I arrived at work early. I wanted a coffee. I was brooding over my decision. While I was making a coffee for myself, my co-workers must have assumed I had started work and left me all alone at the front. Some customers came in, and I wasn't going to let them stand there waiting, so I took their order: A soy latte and a skinny flat white. It would only take a minute so I figured I'd make their coffee despite the fact I hadn't started work yet. But my head wasn't entirely in it, and I put the soy in the wrong jug and didn't notice until I started steaming the second jug of milk. Figures.

So I pulled some more shots of espresso, wash out the jugs, and start steaming the soy, etc., and all this is taking a few extra minutes. The supervisor comes up front to take the orders of more customers that have filtered in. She starts telling me that I need to start using a bigger jug because I'm going too slow. The other people in line can hear this critique. This was bullshit feedback for a few reasons. One, the original customers had requested two different types of milk, so a bigger jug isn't going make things quicker -- in fact, a bigger jug would probably take longer. Second, the reason it took so long is that I messed up the order. And third, I wasn't on the fucking clock yet. If someone else was doing there job I wouldn't be doing it for them!

I finished those coffees and started on a take-away order put in front of me. I'm still not on the clock yet but it's a take-away tea and a cappuccino, so will only take a minute. I call the order out and the guy grabs the tea from the lid to hand to his wife and the lid pops off. The water for the tea is very hot and it spills onto part of his hand. To be honest, I probably messed up putting the cover on entirely. He starts cursing at me, "You're dicking around for ten minutes and you can't even put a fucking coffee cup on right." Et cetera, et cetera. My supervisor says a few more things concurring with the pace of my work. Anyway, I clean up the small mess, and apologize. Then I take the coffee I had made for myself, now cold, and sit down for another ten minutes until my shift starts. Talk about the start of a bad day on top of the news of the morning.

I was put on some kitchen-hand work with the chef that morning. I explained to him my situation and he was very encouraging. I hadn't totally made up my mind yet. I think his enthusiasm for my opportunity helped me re-calibrate my own perspective and become enthusiastic too. I needed that. I called the recruiter on my break and told her I had made my decision. I was going to take the job.

So that was a week ago and things are happening quickly. I'm finish up my hospitality jobs this week. I took a picture of the last coffee I made at work, and I have a few more shifts as a pizza cook.

Pouring the milk for my (second to) last coffee.

The final result. Not bad for being under pressure.

I was lucky to find and secure an affordable apartment in Sydney that is walking distance to work. I'm flying out on Saturday morning, and start work Wednesday, February 15th.

Home is a relative thing. Often it's a comfortable place where friends, family, scenery and habits are familiar. When that isn't the case, then you are in transit -- you're a traveler, near or far from an actual home. When I'm in transit, I look at things with a different perspective and it often leads to unique experiences. If you're lucky, some of those in-transit places become a home, and I have some fond memories of places like that. But Perth never really felt like home to me. I've been in-transit in Perth for six months now, and that's too long and not that interesting. It would be more appropriate to say I was "stuck", and the intrigue was gone. So I look forward to the next six months in Sydney. I doubt it will feel like home either, and I'm not looking for Sydney to fit that bill, but it is one step closer to home and another adventure of a different variety. Those are two things I'm excited about. 

Bikes4Life and The Best Sandwich Ever

When I returned from Vietnam I called the Perth Art Gallery Cafe to check my work hours. I was excited to be productive after some rest and relaxation. Unfortunately, I was informed that the weekend work had slowed considerably because the main exhibit at the Art Gallery had ended and  the hot weather had driven a lot of people to the beach. So the more permanent staff were being given preference on the limited hours. Back to looking for a job...

My weekdays are typically my weekends and vice versa. With no work available, I felt like I should do something productive. Coincidentally, one of my co-workers, Damon, was looking for volunteers for a charity called Bikes4Life. I could try to explain the organization to you in my own words, but the folks who created the website probably thought a lot harder about it: Bikes4Life is a global community initiative that is dedicated to providing bicycles to people, particularly youth, who are underprivileged, aimed at helping the most vulnerable, isolated, and neglected groups within society. Volunteering would be a perfect opportunity to be productive while doing some good in the world.

Damon had done the hard work: PR for the paper and local news, talking to interested donors, getting their details, mapping out where bikes were located, finding volunteers, organizing transport and bicycle repair gurus, and finding the massive amount of storage needed to refurbish the bikes before being shipped out. My job would be to help collect the bikes from people who've already pledged a bicycle donation. Too easy.

On Saturday morning, I met up with Damon (Dame-O) and the other volunteers, Johnathan (John-O), Tim, and Tina. There was a short little planning period and then we hit the road. John and Damon would collect bikes in the northwest of the city using the black pick-up truck (i.e. a ute). Tim, Tina and I would team up in the moving truck and collect bikes in the northeastern part of the city.

Once in the truck, we all naturally fell into our roles. I didn't know the city well enough to navigate and I couldn't drive since I lost my wallet and drivers license while travelling. That meant I was the caller -- I garnered my slightly higher-pitched chatty voice and started scheduling pick-ups. Tina was the navigator because she knew the area best -- plus, have you ever seen a woman operate a truck? (That's a bad joke, obviously. Sorry). She used a map book, um, like a paper one instead of a digital version that talks to you. How strange! But let me say this: navigating with a real map feels way more adventurous than using a GPS device. Finally, that meant that friendly Tim, with his "friendly mutton chop" style beard (yes, that is the technical name), would be the driver or else we were going to have a very long day.

The morning started slowly, but once we figured out a routine and got a realistic idea of how long each pick-up would take, it was easy. Probably 90% of the people donating bikes were elderly who could no longer ride a bicycle or whose grandchildren had grown-up. That meant a lot of the bikes were quite old, perhaps 40 or 50 years old, or out-of-style kids' bikes. Anyway, I'm sure they'll find a good home and make a child happy.

Around noon, we had a pick-up near Tina's house. Her house was a convenient place to stock up on water on such a hot day. I didn't expect that food would be offered, but when Tina put containers of homemade Indian curry chicken, hearty wheat bread, Greek yogurt, and something akin to pico de gallo on the counter, I couldn't help myself. Best sandwich I've had in Australia. The spiciness of the curry, the cooling effect of the yogurt, the herb flavors from the pico. Thinking of it makes me salivate. If charity organizations offered sandwiches like that all the time to their volunteers, there'd be a surplus of volunteers and the world would be a better place.

We only picked up seven bikes in the morning, but the afternoon was much more productive. We had a good rhythm and worked quickly so we could escape from the heat to go back inside the air-conditioned truck cabin. By the end of the day we had picked up 30 bikes but two were salvaged from a trash collection we passed while looking for another house.

The truck filled with 30 bikes. 

The largest single donation was five bikes and a tricycle, but the bikes were so old and rusted out that I'd probably revise that figure to 2.5 bikes. The sweetest bike was the purple low-rider pictured below. The nicest bike was a legit mountain bike worth $500 or $600 dollars -- the donor also offered us freshly made mango sorbet.

The purple low-rider with a velvet banana seat. This bike will instantaneously make a kid in Africa the coolest in his entourage. 

After six hours of collecting bikes, all we had to do was bring them to the storage location. We made quick work of that and then celebrated with a beer back at the meeting house. A pretty productive day and I had a lot of fun driving around with Tim and Tina. Oh, and the best sandwich ever.

From left to right, Tina, Tim, John-o and Dame-o posing in front of the storage garage after adding the days hull to the pile. 

'Nam, Man

(Huzzuh! I’ve finally created a palindrome blog title! This attempt is pretty weak at 6 letters but my runners-up were 1) 'Nam Blog Odd, O' dog, Ol' B, Man, 2) Party 'Nam's Man-y Trap and 3) Noël in ‘Nam, man, Niles On. If there is an obvious one I missed, let me know). 

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam is just like I remember: Humid, chaotic and unimpressive. I had set the bar low, but arriving by plane doesn't provide much in the way of acclimatization. Here are a list of things I found immediately annoying.

1. Taxi drivers must, MUST, hassle any Western-looking individual if they need a ride -- no matter how many other taxi drivers this person has refused or ignored in their presence.
2. The noticeable absence of trash cans and a culture of disposing of trash wherever seems most disagreeable.  Poor cultural habit or thrifty solution to rising ocean levels??
3. The 20 million Vietnamese on scooters in a sprawling city mostly devoid of traffic signs, traffic laws, and order. Riding on the sidewalk. Yup. Wrong side of the road. Indeed. 6-person family on a scooter. Check. Bamboo poles slung like a medieval jouster. Check. Ignoring red lights, stopping in the middle of the highway, shooting a pregnant woman in the face. Check, check, er, I made that last one up.
4. Open sewers. They are gross and smell bad. Weird stuff grows in them. Rodents play around in them. Trash migrates into them, and then eventually that trash flows into to a stream, river, sea, or ocean near you. At least grates are good at hiding the truth.
5. I understand why it happens, but I wish the staring wasn’t so blatant for the first few minutes, especially in non-tourist areas. 

Fortunately, after a few days, 1, 2, 4, and 5 aren’t as noticeable. For 3, as a passenger in a bus, it’s somewhat amazing to watch as long as you don't have a strong sense of self-preservation for you or others. The vehicular chaos is a wreathing mass of scooters and bodies all obeying unspoken and unwritten rules of the road. The only obvious rule is to yield to the thing that is bigger and moving faster than you are.

To me, a bus in Asia is a magical hellhole where I’m only vulnerable to the unpleasantness inside the bus: long periods of sitting and deep vein thrombosis (Thanks Karen N.), bad smells from food and the occasional motion sickness, air-con that would kill a polar bear, the rare tactless guy trying to practice his English, my agonizing inability to sleep on bus rides shorter than 18 hours, the exposed upholstery nail in the seat, unintelligible karaoke at ear bleeding decibels, and many other trials.

But all things exterior to the bus are out of my control and therefore, inconsequential. Sometimes I picture the blank stare I’d expect to receive from a bus driver if I told him in well-mannered English, “Kind sir, if I could so much as request – and I say this with the utmost respect – if you could be so kind to slow down just a tad and maybe tone down the reckless overtaking, we'd all just be so pleased. Thanks for all you do. Good day.” And so, I stare out the window with zen-like complacency, much different than the backseat driver I feel like when a Westerner drives.

But this chaos becomes much more tangible when crossing a road by foot in HCMC, which is sort of like a live-action version of Frogger. The strategy is to walk into the road at the right time, continue walking no matter how terrifying it is, and hope everyone sees you and can avoid you. If you are Vietnamese you can shorten this process by not looking at all, which always makes me cringe. For beginners, the key is picking when to start walking...

To be honest, a mildly busy street in China Town during midday, HCMC.

One of the main ways of getting around HCMC is on a local green bus -- at least I assume that is the case, because I've never ridden one in HCMC. For the time being, I've gotten over seeking out that type of authentic "cultural" experience. I’ll save that sort of stuff for the crazy German backpackers that carry hand-carved walking-sticks, who come off as cultishly devout WWOOFers, and smell like the open sewers in # 4 above.  (Note: I’ve met only one of these types of Germans in the course of a year, on a local bus, which is one more such person than any other country).  Anyway, I was told that the green buses pay an annuity for life-lasting injuries, and pay a one-lump sum if someone is killed in an accident. Apparently the latter is the preferred option, which sounds really scary to a Westerner. My guess is that if you get hit by an equally reckless Vietnamese driver whose vehicle isn't government owned, the victim gets nothing, so getting hit by a green bus isn't as bad as it sounds in Vietnam. Regardless, unless you have a morbid fascination with pavement and ground meat, careful with that first step.

No roughing it in hostels on this trip. A placid pool waiting to be disturbed. 

Well, I didn't only cross roads in Vietnam for two and a half weeks. I was here for a true non-backpacker vacation and I was happily accompanied by a French traveler I met in Malaysia many months ago. We took an excursion to the Cao Dai Great Temple, Tay Ninh Holy See. Cao Dai is a monotheistic religion blending Western and Eastern religious themes and concepts, but also integrating some secular figures as well. How would you like to have Jesus, Buddha, Victor Hugo and Napoleon as saints in your religion? Welcome to the psychedelic religion of Cao Dai. By judging their tastes in interior decoration, psychedelic is the perfect word.

The Cao Dai during worship in the Great Temple.

The guy in the chapeau is Victor Hugo, one of the  prominent modern saints of the religion.

But most of our time was spent relaxing, primarily pool-side, or eating delicious food. The low-key holiday was mixed up with some trips to Ho Chi Minh City, celebrating Christmas and partying it up at the Hard Rock Cafe for New Years.

Between band acts on New Years Eve, there were stage contests for the audience. During the first three contests, I found myself watching the spectacle -- a speed contest to eat an apple hanging from a string, picking things out of a hat, taking a shot of alcohol without using your hands. Somewhere during that third act, I got intoxicated enough to think, "I'm more coordinated than those drunk idiots."

So I volunteered for the fourth. By volunteer I mean I walked up to the front of the stage, declared myself picked, and bowed to the audience. In retrospect, maybe I was a little drunker than I thought at the time. There was a formal selection process which ended up with three Vietnamese/Asian ladies and three foreign guys, one being me. I stood on stage, blinding stage lights shining in my face, waiting for the contest to be declared. I reflected on this and realized that masked by those stage lights are more than a hundred people watching in near silence. It was at this point that my fear of public speaking/performance started to drift to the surface. My pulse increased, little butterflies fluttered in my stomach, and I thought, "What the fuck am I doing up here?"

The contest was declared: A battle-of-the-sexes dance off, 30 seconds per person, points deducted for laughing while the opposing sex dances. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck that. Okay, I feel awkward dancing in dark rooms, by myself, so this was especially distressing.

The ladies started first, I was to be second, and alternating through the remaining people. Not laughing was easy. I was terrified. I didn't have much time to think.  There were 10 seconds of blank panic. 10 seconds of wondering what kind of dance move is funny or embarrassing for a guy. And 10 seconds of "Holy shit, I'm gonna do a booty dance on stage." Then it was my turn.

I boogied the two paces closer to my opponent, playing it cool, about faced, bent over, put my hand on the floor and did my best impression of Beyoncé jiggling it. I can't say that I actually did a booty dance, and thankfully, no one I personally know captured any pictures of the act to shame me with. I truly hope no one else did either, but if so, I hope they never surface when I run for President. Ultimately the girls won, why?, I don't know, but I think it was rigged -- my dance was hilarious, good or bad. For second place each volunteer received a gift voucher equivalent to US$10. Not. Worth. It.

The rest of the night and the rest of the vacation was a lot of fun, and I've learned a valuable lesson. If I start the night with an extremely embarrassing dance move on stage, the normal awkwardness of my dancing doesn't feel that bad. A pretty good philosophy to apply to other uncomfortable things in life. 

A Walk In The Park

Since I don't have a car in Perth I've been constrained to the areas that are accessible by public transport. Public transport isn't very cheap when your income is ~$200 per week and rent is $140 per week. On top of that the sun is bright and cancerous during the day, and basically every animal here is lethal if it looks at you the wrong way, so lately I've adopted a sloth-like sedentary life-style. Under further scrutiny those might not be great reasons for inactivity, but I've rationalized reasons nonetheless. (Aside: Who's the guy that decided to ignore the entire convention of using spaces between words when he allowed "nonetheless" in the dictionary? I hope that editor was fired).

But every once in a while, if I wake up before noon on one of the five days that I don't work each week, I shower myself in sunscreen and seek an adventure outside. Most recently, that adventure was a walk in the park, Kings Park to be exact, located just a short distance from the center of the city. 

I had walked by Kings Park during the City-to-Shore Fun Run on my first weekend in Perth in August. The Run was a charity event, which I didn't formally participate in, but informally, I think all 30,000+ participants were glad that I didn't use my mind-bullets on anyone. (Or did I?) Such was my familiarity that I felt I could "guess" my way to Kings Park by walking west from the city along the river. This turned out to be an excellent guess, which I never fully realized because I started doubting myself and then asked for directions. In a Spanish accent, a hotel attendant told me to "go up the Jacob's Ladder. It's the best way to get to the park."

Indeed, a handful of paces further from the hotel and I arrived at the so-called Jacob's Ladder, but was disappointed that it ascended a mere 40 meters -- some 300 steps -- nowhere close to the heaven in the Book of Genesis. Like a moth to a flame, the stairs were flooded with fitness-conscious individuals who doggedly trudged up and then mercilessly down like a modern day Sisyphus and his boulder. The attractive women panting heavily as they passed served as a minor consolation for not finding salvation. 

The view NOT from heaven.

Once on top of the stairs, Kings Park was distinguishable by a parkway lined with tall beech trees running parallel to a path on a ridge overlooking Perth and the Swan River. The notable attractions at Kings Park are war memorials, a botanical garden, and well-trimmed grass that would do justice at a golf course. 

Perth from a viewing point at Kings Park.

I strolled around various areas of the park, headed in the general direction of the botanical garden. Following the signs and arrows, I mistakenly read a sign as saying Bubonical Garden and laughed to myself. Here is my rendering of such a garden. 

A unicorn playing in a drab Bubonical Garden.

The botanical garden showcases the different flora and fauna from all around Australia. I can relay this fact only because of the signage provided.  In my opinion, all the plants looked of a robust-and-rugged variety that can hold up to the harsh sun and arid climate. One particular surprise in the garden was a glass-walled arch-shaped bridge that spanned between the tree canopies and offered a clear view of the river. 

A cool little bridge, blending modern architecture in a natural setting.

A baobab tree and the Swan River in the background.

I made my way further through the garden, following signs for a "Place of Reflection". In my heart, I hoped that this place would contain a placid water pool reflecting the sky and trees like a mirror. I found plenty of tranquility but the reflection was all internal. Still pleasant but not as fun. 

I began the walk back to the city in order to catch a train home. Along the way I came upon a woman in a bright red dress shaking it like a Polaroid picture, backed up with a simple musical accompaniment. An on-looker explained it was an Idol-style competition between international students finishing up their time studying English in Australia. From a judge's commentary, I picked up that they were representing Brazil. Check it out in this video. 

And at that, I earned my Vitamin-D quota to justify my hibernation of late. 

Summer and Thanksgiving

The weather continues to warm to uncomfortable levels, and adolescent kids and university students, having wrapped up their classes and exams, are flocking to their beach-of-choice to bask in the Sun's potent, uninhibited UV rays. It's the paradoxical custom of tanning to look healthy and sexy when you're young, at the expense of looking much older earlier in life, along with a higher risk of skin cancer. The smart ones get up early to do whatever needs doing, then escape the midday heat somewhere inside, and re-emerge in the late afternoon as the off-shore breezes move back onto the city to cool things off. (The stupid ones go to the beach lathered in oil, surrounded by parabolic mirrors, while listening to Justin Bieber's "Baby" and Rebecca Black's "Friday").

Yes, the aromatic smells in the air and the electric energy of the masses are whispering into the wind: It's American Thanksgiving, the official start of summer in Australia. And as soon as I heard this calling, I knew it  must be true because I couldn't find any resources (i.e. Googe hits) that say Thanksgiving isn't the official start of summer in Australia.

I was finding it difficult to persuade any Australians to celebrate in our mythologized secular Thanksgiving holiday, where we come together as a family to give thanks for our good fortune -- just like the Pilgrim settlers of America first gave thanks to God, circa 1600, for a great autumnal bounty after receiving assistance and tutelage from Native Americans. (We returned the favor with about three centuries of epidemic diseases, slavery, war, persecution, inhumanity, and manifest destiny, and depleted their population from about 10 million to about 250,000, along with their self-worth in a White Man dominated society, and relegated them to tiny swaths of generally useless land. Amen).

But I was hungry, so, once again, I was eager to ignore the salient details of American history and gorge myself on an egregious amount of food. If I wasn't going to be with my family for Thanksgiving, I was at least going to stuff my face with food.

Fortunately, I was lucky enough to find some Americans, Heather and Sarah, with which to celebrate the holiday. I met Heather and Sarah at my barista certification course in September. I'm not lying when I say that in the first five minutes of chatting the topic of Thanksgiving dinner in Australia came up. In a few weeks, a date was set and an invitation extended: Saturday 26th of November, 5pm. Bring food, drink, and a gluttonous appetite.

When I arrived at Heather's house, I met her roommates, who would be partaking in the celebrations. Our party consisted of one Australian, one Kiwi, two Germans, two Japanese, and three USAns. I was early and mostly hung out with the Kiwi Carl while we drank beers and watched Heather slave over a 6 kg turkey along with all the sides she was preparing. I managed to help a little by convincing Heather that mashing the boiled potatoes was a "man's job".

The bird fresh out of the oven and resting before Heather had the honor of carving it.

The feast was turning out to be enormous. The Japanese duo brought a platter of handmade sushi rolls -- a perfect appetizer for holding off the watering mouths as we waited. I brought corn bread pudding and smashed butternut squash. Heather had prepared mashed potatoes, turkey, roasted carrots, cranberry sauce, baked sweet potato casserole covered with marshmallows, macaroni and cheese, bread rolls, vegetarian and normal stuffing, and gravy. For desert, someone brought a chocolate cake decorated into a hedgehog with chocolate frosting and white chocolate wafers; someone else brought Tiramisu.

The marshmallow peaks of sweet potato casserole. 

Heather carved the turkey, we posed for a picture or two -- having accomplished what nay-sayers said couldn't be done in Australia-- and the chaos began. If you've ever had Thanksgiving, you know what happens. Usually the sequence of events are feast with the family, watch American football while falling in and out of consciousness from the Turkey Nap, and eventually wake up sometime later for desert. In bizarre-o Thanksgiving in Australia, where football means rugby, footie, or soccer (I'll probably never know which), we scrapped watching sports in exchange for playing them on an XBox using the motion sensor based game Kinect Sports, which was actually pretty cool. Instead of using remotes like those utilized in Wii Sports or Playstation, Kinect Sports requires you to, one, have hands and, two, not be paraplegic (I apologize to those offended). In addition, we listened to classic holiday music like Snoop Dog's Doggystyle and a compilation of James Brown screeching over musical instrument accompaniment.  The entertainment from the video game was enough to stave off napping until the party digressed into watching pop-culture videos of Wilford Brimley saying diabetes, or "Dia-beetis", such as in this awful rap video and this Family Guy clip.

Starting from 6 o'clock, Mark, Lauren, Sarah, Julia, Carl, Me, and the two roommates from Japan (even that's a guess on the country, and whose names couldn't be remembered because I'm an ignorant white guy -- true Thanksgiving spirit really).

The next day, as I reflected on the previous evening while working at the Caffissimo Cafe at the Perth Art Gallery, I was gracious for another reason beyond the good fortune of spending time with good people while traveling in a "foreign" country. There was no cacophany of Chistmas music making my ears bleed. There weren't even decorations or faux Christmas trees in sight. People didn't talk about the holiday deals they would snatch up, or tell stories about waiting in line at absurd hours of the morning, or deals they scored on Black Friday.

Every year Christmas seems to be coming earlier -- a longer buying season means more money for businesses, especially those hurting from the recession -- and Thanksgiving, unfortunately I think, gets marred by the consumerism. The simpleness of spending time with family and friends on Thanksgiving is why I like the holiday so much (oh, and eating), but the pleasant memory of it is lost quickly as Americans get caught up with the buying season. By the time Christmas comes, the try-hards are stressed out and exhausted from trying to score good deals or figuring out the perfect gift; the apathetic, like me, feel alienated by everyone in a game I don't identify with; and then there's everyone in between. It's nice to give a gift that really makes someone happy, but that is hard to do in a society that has a lot (even during a recession), and I usually end up going through the motions of Chistmas because I feel forced to follow the heard.

I'm not saying that this doesn't happen in Australia. I'm sure it does, but at least it comes a little later in the season, with a lower intensity of consumerism. For me that means a little less second-hand stress as I think about what to get to people, who those people will be, and if I'll even be able to afford it. Time will tell. For now, I'll try to enjoy the Thanksgiving after-glow. You should too.