Henry Rollins

Friday night we went to see Henry Rollins at the York Centre, a semi-round theater at the University of Sydney. He was outstanding - went for over three hours! Spoken word completely, which is just amazing.

Great stories about his visits to Tehran, Damascus, and Beirut, all taken especially because they are capitals considered the enemy of the Unites States. He talked about the generous and welcoming people he met on his journeys, and the fact that people are pretty much the same all around the world.

Real hyperactive, extremely intense, very funny, very serious. Thanks Henry!

Anzac Day

Today, April 25th, is Anzac Day, a national holiday here to commemorate the first major military action of members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps during World War I.

Over 8,000 Australian and 2,700 New Zealand soldiers died at the battle of Gallipoli in Turkey. For the duration of the war, total losses were over 60,000 for Australia and 18,000 for New Zealand. Given the small population of both countries - Australia had less than 5 million, New Zealand had less than 1.2 million - such losses were enormous. A comparable loss today in the United States would be 3.6 MILLION dead.

Since World War II, Anzac Day has been to commemorate the lives of Australians and New Zealanders lost in that war as well, and all wars since then. There are no longer any living veterans of the first World War, and those from the second World War are all now well over 80 years of age.

It is a solemn day, with nearly all offices and shops closed. Marches of veterans and their families are held in every suburb and city. Here is some reporting of it:

ABC News
SBS News

Maybe one day we'll figure it out.

Rain, pain, staying sane

We've had 11 days straight of rain, with the last several of the all-day-gray variety. Things are green and brown - grass and other greenery is greener than ever, the deciduous trees growing browner and more denuded daily. Definitely feeling like Autumn.

All this weather makes us a little more housebound than usual - Supadog and I still do our walks to Rushcutters Bay Park. After all, if there was ever a dog designed for rain, it's the Old English Sheepdog. We now play kong or ball every time we go there.

My shoulder continues to improve, but it's definitely not a direct path forward. Many nights (last night was one of them) I can't sleep well at all because of soreness or straight-out pain. Mobility and strength continue to improve, but here over a month later, I still can't raise my arm above my shoulder. My physio says this is completely normal, so it's all good.

I've been doing a fair amount of research on carbon trading, mostly just trying to figure it all out. Check out that blog for the boring details here. Overall life is good. This Friday we're seeing Henry Rollins.

Paris and meatballs

Tonight, V and I went to see the movie "Paris" by Cédric Klapisch. V thought it was "Brilliant" - and I agree. A trailer (in French only) is here. An SMH review of it is here.

It's one of these stories of many characters whose lives somehow intertwine. The focus, though, is on Romain Duris' character, Pierre, a dancer at the Moulin Rouge who just found out he has heart disease and needs a transplant soon. The closeness of death makes him realize the beauty and sacredness of life, which he observes in all its small details: the apartment building's custodian taking the garbage bins out to the street, a "jolie" girl in the apartment across the street, explaining to his nephew there is a Santa Claus.

The soundtrack was great, too. Can't find it online.

Dinner was Ikea's Swedish meatballs with pasta. Here's the recipe:

500 grams Ikea frozen Swedish meatballs
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion
250 grams button mushrooms
2 cloves garlic
1 cup beef broth
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
3 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons sour cream
1 cube onion flavour
250 grams egg noodles
salt and pepper to taste

Pour the olive oil in a pan. Cut up the onion, mushrooms, and garlic and sauté for about five minutes. Then add the beef broth and Worcestershire sauce. Add in the flour a little at a time, stirring it in to thicken the broth. Microwave the meatballs for two minutes on high, and put them in, as well as the sour cream and onion flavour. Let simmer.

Separately, cook the noodles. When the noodles are done, the meatballs and sauce are ready. Serve and enjoy!

Dreams from My Father

I've almost finished reading "Dreams from My Father" - Barack Obama's autobiography. I can't recommend it enough. Amazing story, and one that I relate to, and one I imagine everyone can relate to.

He talks about what family means to him, what or where home is, all these things that all of us have to deal with. Do we go further out into the big scary world, or stay in our comfortable space?

He's a great story teller. Read it if you can.

Dad

Last October before I moved, I went to visit my Mom, who lives near Clearwater Florida. While I was there, she shared all kinds of photos with me, including these two of my dad:



My dad taught elementary school until the mid-1960's, first in Florida, then Indiana. The photo on the left was taken before I was born. The one on the right, I want to say, was taken around 1962. Not sure which tie I like better. With the glasses, definitely the ones on the left.

He taught all of my siblings, but not me. He made a career switch by the time I got to first grade.

He died in 1980, when I was still in undergraduate. I'm older now than he was in either of these photos. Soon I'll be as old as he was when he died. I miss him.

Not the Ides of April

Today I heard a story by Soundprint on WAMU called "After the Shot" about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, which took place 143 years ago today. At almost a half hour, it's a really interesting report. One thing it informed me of is that while we all know that the Ides of March is March 15, the Ides of April is April 13. Booth planned on assassinating Lincoln on that day for symbolic reasons, but Lincoln had a bad headache and did not go out as planned. And we all know the rest, until you hear this story.

This brings me to what each year feels like my own demise: income taxes. I still do them with the help of Turbotax, and each year it becomes more complicated and more of an emotional drain. A few weeks ago, V asked me if I had done them, and I just sort of snapped at him. He asked me once, "You don't have an accountant?" and I said no, the economist in me refuses to give in. Even though I'm due a huge refund (because of the move) I still haven't done them. Soon soon.

Letter to my niece

Hey Niece person!

Good to hear from you. Good to hear about Alaska. I'm sure he had a great time as well. Did he go back there? I forget what he does for a living.

School - what we do with our lives before we get serious with our lives, before we get a real life. Not necessarily. If your heart is in your school work, then that's a real life. If you are doing it just because you thought you should, or because you haven't found a job yet, well I'm not sure if that's a good enough reason. You will find a job that you like - it will just take some time.

If you go to grad school to distinguish yourself from others who do not complete grad school and thus make yourself more competitive in the job market, well that is a good reason.

I went to grad school, basically because I did not have a job - the job market was awful then: unemployment was almost 10% and it was difficult for fresh graduates to get work. And I was very afraid of being unemployed. (Looking back, I think I would've gotten hired straight out of undergrad, if I so chose.) I also did it to make myself more competitive. So for me it was a combination of good reasons and bad reasons. The other reason I did it was to put off reality: a 40 hour work week and settling down, as it were. In that sense I was sort of the opposite of where you sound like you are right now.

What you need to do, in my humble opinion, is follow your dreams. Do something that gets you excited, not that just pays the bills. If you know what you want, do it.

My big problem when I was your age, is that I did not really know what I wanted. I loved bicycling, but I couldn't see making a career out of being a bicycle courier. (It was, though, easily the most exciting job I've ever had.)

I had some ideas of what I wanted: something to pay the bills, something not evil, and public service definitely pushes a button in me. I definitely have a gene for economics in me. That got me headed toward Agriculture and the job I do today. But it's not like ever since I was four years old that I told people, "When I grow up, I want to be an agricultural economist." I envy the people who do feel that way about their work.

Enough unkly blah blah.

Things are going pretty well overall. My shoulder recovery is a lot slower than I had hoped. I can only just in the last week type with my right hand. I still can't hold a fork or knife, or shave, or raise my arm much at all without "yikes". And I am definitely impatient about these things. I am so antsy for the gym. And running! I have jogged a little with Fannie the Supadog, but it looks pretty queer to run with a sling on your arm. At least it's a fashionable black. :-)

Australia is great. V and I are going to Cairns in early May for a long weekend, and it looks like we might go to New Zealand as well for a long weekend. I have friends in Wellington, and I'm thinking we should go climb Mount Egmont. Did you ever make it to New Zealand? I want to think that you did.

All in all, things are good. You've been on my mind, and I almost called you the other day. Did I ever tell you my U.S. phone number? It's (no you can't know without asking). It either rings on Skype or my home phone here. If you do want to call, call either before 9 AM or after 5 PM. We're 14 hours ahead right now ...

Unk Mark

Here and There (Bilocation)

In this virtual environment, it's easy to go to the old home. Back in DC, I listened to NPR at WAMU on the radio; it's real easy to listen to All Things Considered or Marketplace here on my Real player. What is a little weird is listening to the evening news at 8 in the morning.

Of course, I read washingtonpost.com to catch up on DC and US news. It's not like reading the paper - especially the comics - but it works.

Here my print news sources are the Sydney Morning Herald and Australian Financial Review; for television, it's SBS (Special Broadcasting Service) and ABC news (that's Australian Broadcasting Corporation). Both are state-funded. SBS is very interesting, as its mission as a network is "to provide multilingual and multicultural radio and television services that inform, educate and entertain all Australians and, in doing so, reflect Australia's multicultural society". They also report in English.

For the papers, I buy them maybe two or three times a week. Newspapers here are more expensive in the United States. The Sydney Morning Herald is $1.30 (about US$1.21) and the Financial Review is $2.70 (about US$2.51); I haven't yet checked to see if they provide discounts for daily delivery.

The Australian perspective is rather refreshing, and more comprehensive in its international coverage. The financial news follows the U.S. business environment since the United States makes up such a large share of world business news (plus it's making a lot of news right now, with the deepening recession and subprime mess).

What is so amazing aboout our internet age is that I can have my feet in both the U.S. world and the Australian world at the same time.

Dining in Balmoral at the Bathers' Pavilion

Last night, V took me out for dinner at The Bathers' Pavilion in Balmoral, a suburb in the Mosman Council. Mosman is a municipality "on the northern shores of Sydney Harbour." Balmoral is a suburb kinda like Mass Ave Heights in DC, maybe like Scarsdale in New York. Check out the menu we had here.

Here's what we had: for appetisers, he had the Moreton Bay bug tail with fennel and ruby grapefruit salad, with shellfish butter, and I had the freshly shucked regional oysters on ice, with home made pumpernickel, red onion vinaigrette. "Moreton Bay Bug" is a type of shellfish: a picture of it is here.

Our wines: V started with a 2006 Jean-Luc Mader Riesling from Alsace; I had a 2007 French Island Pinot Gris from Victoria.

For mains, he ordered Farmed Tasmanian Arctic Charr with scallop, ginger and pork crepe and coriander pesto, and I had Jewfish with olive crust, with prawn ratatouille and organic tomatoes. Charr is a member of the salmon family.

Dessert for me was a menage a trois des chocolats; his was the roast vanilla peach with stone fruit parfait, nougatine, and apricot sorbet. With dessert, I had a 15-year port from Rockdale; V had a Scarborough Late Harvest Semillon.

It was all pretty amazing: the food, the wine, the service, the venue. The restaurant itself is in the old municipal bathing pavilion on the beach at Balmoral. It was originally built in 1928 and redone by Alex Popov in 1999. Here is a blurb about his work.

Topography and Scale

The architectural scales of my neighborhood vary tremendously. The block I live on is an example: it has mostly two-story terrace houses on the west side, but on the east side are one-story homes, two-storys like the west side, four- and five-story apartment buildings, and similar low-level office buildings. But just a few blocks away are five- to eight-story apartment buildings, mixed in with three-story houses, and 10- to 15-story buildings. Just a few more blocks away are 30-story buildings, and within a ten-minute walk is a 42-story building.

You would think that this would be an architectural disaster, but it's not, and that's because of the extreme topography here. A building may look like it is only one-story in front, but in the back it's three floors, because it is built on a hill. Near a park we walk to every day is a 6- or 8-story apartment building, that rises maybe two floors above street level, because it's built in a ravine.

Because the landscape is rolling up and down everywhere, small and large, short and tall, can all fit in together and still look pretty good. There are some exceptions of course: some pretty ugly stuff from the 1960's or 1970's, but it all fits in real well overall. There are some pix of all this on my flickr pages. Take a look:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mgt33139/sets/72157604067232214/

Some of the pix in the set above have sailboats - well they're on Rushcutters Bay, and this satellite pic is the same scene from above, from an earlier entry ...

http://startnewsydney.blogspot.com/2008/03/yarranabbe-park.html

Bjork's Wanderlust Video

look here -