This past Saturday evening was high culture night (take note, Aubrey). Not that drinking copious amounts of wine so far has been slumming it, but relatively the only culture I have experienced so far was the inside of the Australian pub. Ben, myself and a gaggle of doctors headed to the iconic Sydney Opera House for a production of Hamlet. I was quite looking forward to this event, not only as an opportunity to go to the Opera House, but additionally because Sarah Blasko had composed original music for the performance, and would be a part of the play as well. Ben had given me her latest album, What the Sea Wants, The Sea Shall Have a while back, but I’ve just been listening to it non-stop on my early morning commutes to work.

The production was excellent, and the four hours seemed heaps shorter. The set was a period 17th century interior for the most part, but the cast were styled in much more of a 1930s-40s vein, and very smartly dressed. The music was mostly brief interludes between acts, but Blasko sung the scene where Hamlet has added a speech to the play to gauge the reaction of the king. The music was not too prominent, but a nice touch. The play overall was excellent, loosely played at times which made for great effect. Not that I am in any way a connoisseur of the theatre, but I highly enjoyed the play.

The previous night Ben and I joined a few of his friends for dinner at Jazushi, which, if you couldn’t tell from the name, plays Jazz and serves Sushi. Well, it serves it eventually. Ben and I waited over an hour and a half for our wagu beef, which was excellent regardless. About an hour before that, I had come to the conclusion that I actually like raw fish - who the fuck knew? We’re planning a sushi night this week at the excellent Matsuri. A group of us broke off to continue drinking at Trinity, a bar I have now been to four times and really, really like. Surry Hills has quickly become my Smith Street home away from home. Then Ben decided to sing about the Friendly Possum all the way back to the bus. Passerby were either amused or horrified. I struck about a 90/10 balance.

Last night we made it a goal to sample some of the better craft beer Sydney has to offer with a trip to Red Oak and the James Squire Brewhouse. Red Oak’s Kölsh was nice, but lacked that distinct lightness that characterizes the best German original. The Organic Hefeweizen on the other hand was excellent, with a hoppy bite. Squire’s IPA was nice, but just hammers home the idea that American craft brewing has a stranglehold on quality IPA.

Time to yuppiefy the blog again (as if having a blog in the first place isn’t a clear indication of a yuppie bent, you say). I write this as a badass butternut squash and pumpkin lasagna is cooking away in the stove, giving me the time to make my third post in two days. Shocking, I know.

While we’re on the subject of food, I figured I’d recap a portion of this past weekends happenings. Saturday was the Good Food and Wine show at Darling Harbour. My main goal was to go and sample* as many excellent wines as possible. My compatriots were there for similar reasons, but also to see a 30 min presentation with Gordon Ramsay, celebrity chef du jour.

Ben’s mate Denis is a chef himself, and Jess and her sister Kate are also aficionados of the show. I have seen it exactly once, about two weeks ago when here, and the assorted clips of Ramsay’s shtick replayed on Best Week Ever, which boil down to berating and belittling chefs on reality shows. So even I was somewhat baffled by his stand up routine (though he kept the expletives coming) while making some ‘healthy’ dishes you can make at home yourself. If you consider using half a bottle of olive oil on one meal healthy that is. My lone picture from the day here.

I had intended to take more pictures, including all of us, but the remainder of the time at the show was dedicated to jockeying for position at the booths trying to get wee nips of the beverages. Australians are far and away the most polite people you can imagine, except in two distinct situations: queuing for free alcohol samples, and getting on to public transportation. I have been elbowed by little old ladies while trying to get on the bus on countless occasions. Sometimes I feel like I’m in Chinatown. There were a few brewers amongst the numerous vineyards represented, the highlight being Murray’s (and no, they’re not .9%). Their Grand Cru was an incredible take on a Trippel. Mmmm.

So naturally we closed the show down, and then headed back to the Aubrey homestead to continue the evenings festivities. Jess bought some awesome cheese and chocolate mousse, we broke out some wine and ordered Thai. Brandon and Liz had joined us by then and we watched Eagle vs Shark, which I highly recommend.

With regards to my friend the stove top, I feel like I’m trying to boil water in Denver. I forgot that I should boil water in the tea kettle and then put it in a pot on the stove. Give me an open flame any day.

*Liberally sample. As in get tanked. But in a classy way, since it was wine.

I may as well continue with a sports theme (and that of title over-exuberance) with a quick recap of the previous Saturday’s sporting events including the Sydney Swans game I attended.

Ben has lost what minuscule interest he has in Aussie Rules Football since we pounded a six pack each on my couch in Astoria while watching the Swans win a classic game final game in 2005, during which Ben also pounded on the wall when Greg was playing NWA too loud for his tastes. So I headed off solo to the Sydney Cricket Grounds to meet up with Allison and the German and two of their friends to watch the game. Sydney dispatched St. Kilda handily, and I spent a good deal of the game trying to find the guy who looks like Mark Arnot from the distance of the stands.

Of course, drinking ensued in nearby Surry Hills, and I soon realized that I was not making that heinously early 12:35 am bus back to North Ryde. But prudence be damned, I was entertained and later harangued Judith about my article and art history after much protest on her end to hear about it, despite my warnings. And for once my business cards came in handy, as I had visual accompaniment to my insistence that Fabritius is my favourite artist. So around 3:00 I grabbed a cab and trekked home.

Here you are expected to sit in the front with the driver as not to be rude. As I was quite merry from drinking, I did not mind the extended conversation with a lovely Chinese gentelman about everything from the brand of RAM in my laptop to his one visit to New York, which apparently included going from Niagara Falls to Chinatown. And after that, I was still back in time to watch most of the second half of the Socceroos game. Though Ben did yell at me for smelling like cigarettes. All in all a good night of sport.

I have watched heaps of soccer since my arrival down under. Rather than pretend as if I’m not American (which, really, I often want to do when I’m around my fellow countrymen here), I have not begun to call it ‘football.’ But this is as much because Aussies refer to most major sports as ‘footy,’ whether it be soccer, Australian Rules Football or Rugby (both League and Union). The Socceroos have successfully gone on to the second stage of World Cup 2010 qualifying, which leaves me supporting my other country of soccer choice, Germany, as they work their way through the final stages of Euro 2008.

As Ben has explained to me, many international events such as the World Cup or Euro championship are played using the total football philosophy, which emphasizes team over individual, and makes the style of play more cohesive. This might be one of the reasons I’m enjoying it more than usual. Then again, the last time I really watched soccer was during the World Cup in 2006, when I was cheering on both Australia and Germany. But I also really liked watching the Premiership games I’ve seen with Rachael recently (lest she get upset that I don’t give her fair credit as well). We shall see how much I actually watch on my own once I am back home.

On the down side of my newfound interest, the majority of games I have seen have taken place at 2:00 am. The Socceroos in Dubai vs Iraq two weeks ago and in Qatar the following week. And then there was the Germany v Croatia game that we watched with Allison and Judith. In the meantime, the SBS Euro 2008 recap show comes on at 5:30 pm when I am home from work, so I have at least been able to follow a bit, and most recently celebrate the downfall of the Italians.

In addition to the games, I think I may be deriving higher entertainment value from the Australian coach, Pim Verbeek. Unintentional hilarity ensues nearly every time he is asked a question in front of a camera. I mean, he is Dutch, but he’s on another level. At first, his indignant responses to simple questions, such as “Is Harry Kewell (Australia’s best player) going to start?” - “YEEEAAAAHHHS” may have seemed funnier since we had just woken up from a three hour nap at 2:00 am to watch the game. But Pim has kept it up ever since. Alas, no sufficient youtube videos exist, so you’ll have to take my word for it.

Here’s hoping my Krauts can withstand the uber-lucky Turks.

Hopefully this blog theme is a bit less nullus. At the very least, I made it myself.

And at this point, I feel I can now send the link to the blog around to more than three or four people, so those of you just joining, welcome. I was waiting to re-design the blog layout before letting people see it, but I finally got on the ball with it today. I figured y’all should actually read the damn thing before I get home, thus not negating the purpose of a travel blog.

Now that the design is mostly taken care of, I promise some new posts in the coming days. In the meantime, I invite you to read back through the old posts. My photos on flickr have been updated, and there is now a link on the right. I’m working again this week, but will try and get some updates on here soon!

…doesn’t mean I can’t be the asshole that I always am. Enjoy the following picture, and please be encouraged to come up with a terrible New Yorker style caption…

(more…)

Seriously. Actually, three.

More frequent posting to resume in the near future. My work schedule is killing me; I’m off to bed and it’s not even 10:00 pm yet.

Oh, I’ve also had Turkish food and Sushi for the first time while I’m here. This completes the contractual obligation of my yuppie blog to mention food.

My dilettantism has officially come to and end. Well, sort of. I am now technically a proud employee of Integrated Group Sydney. In reality, I am working at Estée Lauder in the warehouse, which must use an agency for casual employment. After sorting out some paperwork and first day instruction, I began my exciting new career packing boxes for shipment to department stores throughout Australia. Bing, a small, polite woman of indiscriminate Southeast Asian origin was my mentor, and got me started checking off supplies as I piled them up to then be packed away in boxes. I have to thank The Battery for something, as this was quite like doing a mailing, but with more crap that went into a box rather than an envelope. Thankfully my experience with New York moves and packing boxes made this job fairly easy. As to how interesting it will remain, time will tell. I gave it about 10:54 am tomorrow.

A quick recap of the Queen’s Birthday Long Week-end, which can also serve as narration to the flickr photostream:

Friday was a Newtown night out. Ben and I met his cousin Shaun for dinner at Doytao, a great Thai restaurant. Well, it was better the last time I ate there, but it was certainly good, and much preferable to $30/plate Mexican that was the original destination, until its obscene price was discovered. Our pub crawl then began in earnest as we snaked our way back up King St. to our final destination, passing out at Brandon’s apartment. It was a Jicks-esque night, as we encountered characters left and right, from the Blackface Manager at the Zanzibar (where, 80s retro night = Lesbian night, complete with ironic hot dogs) to Vicki from Merricksburgh, professional New* procurer, to the queue at the Alfred and the drunk girl we had to help up off the street until the cops came. All in all, an exciting night, with a possible sighting of a .9%’er.

Saturday was finally a gorgeous, sunny day. The hungover walk from Brandon’s back to the CBD to get back to the Northern Suburbs was great, and once we cleaned ourselves up, Ben and I hit the southern beaches for the famed Coogee to Bondi walk. After a late night sleep, we awoke to watch the 2:00am Socceroos game vs Iraq. I slept through the entire second half, but missed nothing but a frustrating effort, apparently.

Sunday included a trip to Blacktown (which, ironically, is where a large portion of Sydney’s African immigrants live) to see Ben’s cousin Mark’s soccer match. They drew 1-1, but Mark scored a goal on a header, so all was not lost. A birthday dinner for Shaun was followed by coming back to Ryde to meet up with Ben’s cousin Isaac, who eventually wore down our resolve and had us in a cab to King’s Cross around 1:00am. The Cross is quite like Times Square about 15 years ago. A bit of sleaze, but not unsafe. After balking at $30 cover charges, we finally found an Irish pub, where we actually met a bunch of Micks, and Isaac got picked up by some drunk American, who then gave him the wrong phone number.

After about 5 hours of sleep we awoke to watch the NBA finals (where I am reluctantly rooting for the Celtics, because in basketball, the Lakers are just about the worst team possible, despite the fact that they don’t hail from Boston). Ben and I then played in the backyard, and, well, we’re old and out of shape. A nice family dinner and a ton of wine later, sleep was awesome.

And so I am off to work again tomorrow (before 6:00 am, mind you) to make sure all the Myers’ in Tasmania have the Clinique Spring 2008 line paraphernalia they could dream of. Then I will somehow try to stay awake for dinner, a concert, and the Germany v Croatia Euro 2008 game that begins at 2:00am. More unentertaining recaps to resume after I catch up on some sleep Friday.

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* Toohey’s New, a ubiquitous brand of beer.

It’s Friday evening at about 5:00 and I’m on Pitt St. waiting to meet Ben after he finishes work so that I can get a SIM card for my borrowed cell phone. The bus got me in to the CBD ridiculously early, so I just staked out a pole to lean on near the Virgin Mobile store while I waited. This block of Pitt St. is closed off to create a pedestrian mall for all the shops, and usually has a variety of people hanging about. Not five minutes before, a crazy woman was walking up and down the block screaming about something or other. I’ve learned to tune these type of things out, but the rest of the people were quite taken by this sight.

I continue to mind my own business, which must have been a giant signal that said “Hey, come accost me!!” A slightly disheveled homeless guy then approaches and asks me for two dollars. Not that I was intending to part with any money, but I legitimately had no change on me, and apologized that I had none. This was apparently not good enough for him:

Hobo: “I’ll fight for your money.”
Me: Bemused stare
Hobo: “You wanna fight?”

I look him straight in the eye, inform him of my lack of desire to fight, while at the same time I stand up straight from the slouch I had on the pole. He now sees that I have a good six inches on him and thinks things over for a moment. He then flashes a big grin, missing his two front teeth, pats me on the head, and says “G’day mate” and moves on.

And I thought New York hobos were a pain in the ass…

Well, no, I haven’t actually consumed any vegemite yet. But I am wholeheartedly embracing the culinary experience down under, eating the Aubreys out of house and crumpet. As Ben said, this will probably become a food/wine blog for a good portion of my stay here. Because really, what else are we supposed to do other than eat and drink? So welcome to the new incarnation of my Yuppie blog. Or ‘Travelogue’ if you prefer (I certainly do, but I’m quite full of myself).

Our first real night out was dinner at a French bistro in Darlinghurst. Fucking brilliant. As was the fact that out of four people, Ben was the only Australian. It’s like we were in New York. Except for the tame Possum we found on our walk back to QVB (I will throw Belkin and bone on this acronym and let you know that this is the Queen Victoria Building, where our trusty 288 Bus picks up).

I will have much more to say in the coming days, as now I’m just kind of sitting around while it rains. In the meantime, you can check out the first smattering of photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wombat_combat/

Auf weidersehen