The extraordinary and the everyday

We roamed the eastern seaboard of Australia in the style of the classic Dalal family road trip. My brother-in-law is a pro by now; he's even introduced his own innovations (SatNav), but it was Craig's first. My 4-year-old niece and my 6-year-old nephew are already old hands at these sort of things, and I was only seven when my Mom, Dad, sister, grandparents and I spent weeks meandering the continental US in an Astro Van--with racing stripes. Back then, we happily took in the marvelous and the mundane, the Grand Canyon and the Big Red gum flavoured soda pop sold only in Texas only for a short time. Weren't we lucky to be in that place at that specific time?

This time, we were six grown-ups and two adorable chickens squished into a minivan with two car seats, heaps of luggage and enough Oreos, Doritos and Mama Dalal's desi junk food to keep everyone's mouth shut for a good long while. The miraculous and the mediocre again marked our travels; the Great Barrier Reef turned me into a snorkeling adventurer (whoa!).

















































Muttonbird Island on Coff's Harbour turned me into the kind of person who decided not to bother with this particular bushwalk. I'm sure you'll be surprised to hear there were no muttonbirds and the "island" is actually more of a hill, and pictures are best taken at night.








































We saw the Big Banana of the Gold Coast, which actually wasn't big enough to warrant a photograph--I've seen a bigger cigarette than that in North Carolina--and we found glittering wonder in the quiet rainforests of the Atherton tablelands. In the Canopy Treehouses, we hiked and fed turtles, and a cheeky possum climbed right onto our porch to steal the birdfood.
































Nanu (that's my nephew's nickname) presented a darling report on Australian birds; we all became amateur birders. I can now identify the Pacific duck (brown and duck-like, looking rather ordinary, but with a black stripe behind the eye) and a Masked Lapwing (surprisingly, looks like it's wearing a yellow mask). I now recognise a Lewin's Honeyeater (identified by the semi-circular yellow ear patch),
















a Red-Browed Finch (Quite sociable with fellow birds and people)
















(though often very blurry in photographs.)

















and the Noisy Miner (loves Starburst).















We even saw a wild cassowary with his two baby chicks. Have you even heard of these? Cassowaries have "horn-like crests called casques on their heads, up to 18 cm (7.1 in). These 'casques' consist of a keratinous skin over a core of firm, cellular foam-like material." Their inner toes "sport a dagger-like claw that is 125 millimetres (4.9 in) long. This claw is particularly fearsome since cassowaries sometimes kick humans and animals with their enormously powerful legs." **Information from Wikipedia.

That's right. What I am saying is that this is a 1.5 metre tall flightless bird with a huge foam horn on its head that can disembowel your dog or small child with a kick.

He looks like a dinosaur. Yes, I know all birds are pretty much dinosaurs. But this is different. Their feathers look like hair. This is a huge and primally intimidating bird. Until you learn they are afraid of umbrellas, and you remember that dinosaurs had pretty small brains.













I hand-fed wallabies and adorable pademelons. We saw a mama wallaby with a baby in its pouch! When things like this happen, the fact smacks you in the head that you are decidedly in a strange country, you are definitely in Australia.
























We saw the exuberant plant life in the rainforest of northern Queensland and considered moving there. Forever.









































I couldn't believe even the fungal plant diseases appear beautiful, reminding us of roses even as they slowly kill another beautiful flower.
















We spent hours in the car, the kids playing TicTacToe and Hangman in the mountains outside Cairns, and I remembered reading volumes and volumes of The Babysitters' Club in the Rockies.

At Victoria's Twelve Apostles, we watched a sparkling sunset, and avoided the chickens as they asked, "Nija Masi, what are apostles?"
















Melbourne was the last leg of our trip, and as we waited in the freezing seabreeze and rain, hoping to see a hundred Little Penguins make their way home, we huddled around the kids to keep our own birds warm. Every trip has the extraordinary and the everyday, but this time, the extraordinary was the everyday. We saw spectacular nature, but my niece and nephew were magical. Just playing UNO or TicTacToe, I fell in love with them again and again, every moment. And the Antarctic ocean wind blew tears in my eyes... my favourite little penguins would be making their own way home far too soon.

The city bleeds kindness

Well, well, dear readers-- it has been quite some time. I'm sitting at my new neighbourhood cafe, enjoying a long black on a ridiculously warm winter day: it's currently a sunny 19C, or about 66F for you non-metrics. The new cafe is promising despite the rather boring name--Sydney Fine Food Company--for two reasons. The first: free internets! The awesome: free picnic rug so you can enjoy coffee and lunch in lovely Alexandria Park.

It's been a long time since I've done anything remotely like what I'm doing today, because my family has been visiting. My mother, father, sister, brother-in-law, nephew and niece all came to Australia for a month; it was crazy and weird and mostly beautiful. The preparation alone was bizarre; because we only moved here about a year ago and still don't own many useful and important things like, say, a stapler or a...bed, it's needless to mention that we didn't happen to have 6 extra pillows, 3 extra beds, or any extra blankets at all. We certainly didn't have enough pots and pans to cook a meal for eight.

Somehow, right before they got here, our friends, co-workers, and total strangers lent or gave us just about everything we needed. I couldn't believe how many people came together to make my family comfortable here. Ruby and Vix were strangers at the cafe. They probably would have stayed that way, if they hadn't overheard me worrying about setting my family up. They decided to lend us a rug, some chairs and a camp bed. We talked more, and I am very glad they aren't strangers anymore. They even gave us some dinner because we'd been moving all day. We still don't know how to thank them for everything; I'm just happy to know such generosity exists in the hearts of strangers... it makes living in a still new, still bewildering city gentler.

Monika lent and gave with all her heart. Julia--my Australian momma--has given me more rides and stuff and help than I can remember. She is a wonderful, sometimes quirky, slightly forgetful and not often punctual, woman I am proud to work with. Sara volunteers at the co-op; she heard about my dilemma and dropped off two boxes of warm, thick woolen blankets. Aidan and Robby lent us a bed, and their poor guests have suffered their couch.

I sat up the night before my family's arrival, sewing tags onto all the blankets, towels and pillowcases I had borrowed, so I would know where to return them. A tag for a blanket loaned to make my nephew warm, a tag for a towel to keep the dishes dry; one for the sheet my sister used, one for the pillow that protected my niece from rolling into the wall.











It took an hour to sew all the tags; by the end, we could see our community. A cartography of the compassion we've found in our first year in Sydney, drawn on bedding and kitchenware. I am still overwhelmed. If the people who care for you could pile all their caring into your living room, what would it look like?

Baby baby baby, We've Changed Our Address

Though my reporting of this comes about a week too late (and then some) from the room of a Novotel resort in Coffs Harbour on the far north coast of NSW, we made big news happen by finally moving at the end of May. Followers of our quasi-adventures Downe Undre may know that moving to a place of our own has been something we've wanted to do for a while, and especially since January, when our verbal agreement with our (now former) flatmate ended. However, it never seemed like the right time, or a good time, or a fiscally-sensible time

, and it took the particularly profound psychological pressure of knowing that Nija's family would soon be coming to visit and stay with us to get us to do it.

Looking for an apartment in Sydney on our budget isn't easy, even though our budget has increased since we first moved here. We were stunned by the rents when we arrived last year: Sydney is the country's most expensive place to live and when compared to Atlanta the prices sound astronomical. We were paying $1067 a month for our previous place (shared with a flatmate) and we figured we could swing $1200, or $300/week, as they list them here. Finding a one-bedroom place for that price is tough, and finding one in a decent part of town is tougher. We hit the rental websites and came across a few availabilities in acceptable neighbourhoods; actually, we didn't really want to move very far and would've probably stayed just where we were had our specific living conditions been different. In fact, in the past year Nija and I have developed a real affinity for our neighbourhood of Redfern/Waterloo. To me, at least, it's the best place in the city to live. It's centrally-located and accessible, compact, attractive, and one of the most historically interesting and culturally important places in Australia. And, for now at least, Redfern is a cheap place to live.

The politics of living in Redfern are complicated. Redfern has long been the heart of urban Aboriginal life in Australia, and has resultantly been the most notorious and maligned neighbourhood in the country for decades. In the sixties, Redfern was a centre of Aboriginal political organisation and resistance, and since then there has been a determined effort to displace the neighbourhood's population. From the perspective of Sydney's powerful cabal of developers, it's simply too well-located and pretty to be left to the blacks. The first stage of this project involved moving thousands of immigrants into huge tower blocks in south Redfern. The second involved draining resources from the area and increasing police harassment to terroristic levels justified as part of Australia's "War on Drugs." This stage culminated in the killing of TJ Hickey and the subsequent Redfern Riots in 2004. The third stage, the present stage, involves using real estate and financial leverage to simply price and zone the Aboriginal residents out of the area.

Whether our recognition of this tragic history conflicts with our desire to live in the area is the complicated part. We're both socially-conscious people and don't think we're entitled to live anywhere in particular. We like Redfern because it has a clear sense of community, even if it's in decline. I partly think that we feel the way we do about our neighbourhood because it's the perpetual underdog, always maligned and demonised. When I tell people I live in Redfern I tend to get looks of surprise, and I get a sick delight out of confronting people with the notion that the only reason Redfern is notorious is because of its demographics. It's without a doubt as safe, if not safer, than most inner-city neighbourhoods, and while there have been several stabbings on my campus in the quiet Eastern Suburbs over the last year, no one ever says "Oh, wow, you go to UNSW...isn't that a dangerous place to study?"

That said, we are not "from" Redfern and in a sense we don't belong there. We are certainly riding on the wave of gentrification, even if we're not part of the gentrifying force itself, and are taking advantage of the fact that Redfern has been "cleaned up" to some degree. It's certainly not as dangerous to walk around the neighbourhood as it might have been a decade ago, though even then it seems the levels of violence were on par with most American cities (remember that Atlanta was America's most violent city for a few years in the late 90s.) We recently went to an event examining the history of Redfern, and distinguished Aboriginal activist and Melbourne Uni lecturer Gary Foley said in his keynote speech that "if you moved to Redfern in the last ten years, you should consider that you might be part of The Problem." The Problem in this case is the displacement of Aboriginal residents of inner-city Sydney and the related collapse of Aboriginal radical organisation in urban Australia. I was taken aback by the frankness of this statement and it made me re-examine my fondness for the neighbourhood and whether we should in fact be trying to live there. I don't think I have completely resolved this issue, but in a sense white people don't belong in Australia on the present terms anyway, so perhaps there's no sense in fretting over the smaller issue of what part of Sydney we live in.

Regardless of my personal political crisis, we focussed our search on Redfern and its surrounds but appropriate places were sparse. We looked at some scuzzy places, some that were smaller than were advertised, and when we did manage to find a really nice place, perfectly located, we were strung along for a good two weeks as the owner wavered on whether he wanted to rent or sell it (he eventually decided to sell, not to us.) We found some decent places that were far afield, but couldn't convince ourselves to move so far from this part of town that has started to mean so much to us. After three weekends of apartment inspections all over town, we managed to find something only four blocks away: a one-bedroom top-floor apartment in a quirky building in a slightly industrial part of the neighbourhood. It seemed to be the best thing going, so we took it, signing the lease on Friday, May 29, leaving us three days to move before Nija's family was to arrive.

The move was indeed an adventure, with the usual pain, annoyance, sweat, and so on. I borrowed a university catering van that made it unnecessary to rent one, hire movers or beg some friend to spend his or her precious time lugging around our stuff.

I managed to drive on the left side (the legal one) without incident, but I did manage to get the van towed by parking it in a weekday "clearway" zone (fine: $150 + profound panic at 6AM.)

Somehow we threw it all together in short order, with very little sleep or food. Everyone loves before-and-after pictures, so here's a shot of Saturday night's hot dog dinner amidst the chaos:

and here's the scene on Sunday morning:

No move would be complete without a panicked trip to Ikea, solver of all problems. A Sunday afternoon trip to Ikea here is just like a Sunday afternoon trip to Ikea anywhere, it turns out:

And the whole experience left me wondering if it's possible to move without much hurry, so that places like Ikea are unnecessary. We bought a whole heap of crap that we needed quickly but that we could've found at second-hand shops all over town; part of me felt gravely defeated when we walked out of that store with all that new stuff, as though I could feel perfectly good coffee mugs and dishracks being tossed into the landfill as the Norse overlords of home furnishing turned up the corners of their mouths in bloodsucking grins in their sterile, frozen castles of medium-density fibreboard.

In the end, thanks to Nija's superior powers of organisation and foresight and the generosity of friends and even strangers that we met at our local cafe, we put the place together very nicely for the arrival of the Dalal/Parekh travelling party. I know that moving here will prove to have been the right decision for us all right now, and worth all the hard work and stress. I even think that the experience helped us feel more at home in Sydney, made us realise that there's a network of people of which we're a part that can offer us support and friendship and to whom we can offer the same. I look forward to getting to know our new neighbourhood; while it's not too far from our old one, it feels very different. I'm thrilled that we managed to find a place in this part of town that we weren't ready to leave yet, and to know that wherever we are in town we can still look for the Redfern towers that point the way home.

(View over Botany Rd toward the northeast from our balcony.)

Stay tuned for our adventures eating our way up the east coast and snorkelling the Great Barrier Reef, as well as tales of our new 'hood.

Oh, and please write if you need our new address.

HA!

I didn't think I'd find an official australian image funnier than the infamous hand-dryer of Katoomba, but this one is also fairly genius.


















See how the eagle is shaking talons with the kangaroo? If the animals can do it, why can't Australia and New Zealand? Please notice the differences presented between America and Australia. The first: Australia's pedestal seems to be made of several ancient-looking coat of arms, whereas America's features a design of relative simplicity, though it is rather derivative, wouldn't you say?
The hilarious: America's motto at the bottom is "E Pluribus Unum," and Australia's motto is "Australia."

It's time for another Monty Python reference: AUSTRALIA AUSTRALIA AUSTRALIA AMEN!

Dear readers, you will be pleased to learn that the boy wonder and I have finally found a new apartment! It's not far from where we currently live, it's a one-bedroom, it's even got a cute balcony. I'm so excited I can't even say. Now, how we're going to manage to move out and be ready to receive my sorely-missed family by Tuesday, I don't know. I'm sure we'll make it.

Craig and I have been feeling a little more at home in Sydney lately; we've found some very cool things to attend. Penguin Plays Ruff is one such event; local writers get up and read out some fictions or non-fictions. It was held in an ultra-hip location: above a convenience store in Newtown. It used an ultra-hip publicity method: Facebook. Even the setup was hip.

















Everyone was to sit on the floor, there were red curtains, and one solitary and very solid mic. I was worried for a moment-- I'm not hip enough to be here! Everyone will know I'm a fraud...then I realised my pants were too tight for me to sit cross-legged. I was safe!

The next time you hear from us, we'll be in new digs, tired, and being stuffed with all the Indian junk food you can imagine!

Scooped: Baffi and Mo!

My favourite cafe has been open for months, but I still can't find anything about it online. Odd, I know, because Sydney has a ridiculous number of bloggers, foodies, commenters, and oh so many mind-numbing twits posting their stupid tweets about their every boring, useless and tweedious synaptic fire. Twats. They are simply not helpful.

Me, on the other hand. My blog is full of only useful, interesting things. I bring you what the rest of Sydney's blogosphere won't dare.

Baffi and Mo
94 Redfern St.
Redfern, Sydney NSW
2016
(02) 8065 3294

They don't have a website yet...or an email address. That's how they roll. Because they care more about good coffee and delicious food than about their web presence. WTF??!? My Soldesign-trained SEO heart breaks. It breaks, and that is why, dear readers, I tell you about Baffi and Mo.

They make amazing coffee, they use Bonsoy, and they serve artisan Sonoma toast with avocado and roasted tomato and garlic. Their logo is a mustache (awesome!) which they stole from me (hey!) as anyone in Mr. GB's Intro to Graphic Design Spring 2007 class will attest. Ahem.

They have amazing wallpaper. Hand printed by fancypants Sydney printmakers at Chee Soon. The return of the artisan.

















And their open kitchen makes the place feel like you're hanging out in your friends' house. The women who run Baffi and Mo are also super friendly and sweet. It's my favourite place to enjoy a weekend morning. If you're in Sydney and reading this-- you should go. If you're not in Sydney-- well, you should be, because I miss you.

















Oh, and I don't know what this "follower" thing in the right column is, but you should join, because a certain Mr. Whitepants Soul Avenue did, and look how together he is!

Congratulations, Christopher!

Good friends, I am happy to announce that my pal Christopher Kemeza got into the Graphic Design BFA at GSU!! I'm really proud and happy for him (you can see his work here.) It was really wonderful to get such news this past week, because it hasn't been the easiest. For some reason, I spent most of this week nauseous and uncomfortable. I couldn't eat a full meal for three days and my outlook on the world was getting bleak. No, I'm definitely not preggars. Don't even think about it.

The other great news this week is that Craig and I have decided it's time to move into our own place. I've been tired of living in this apartment with our flatmate for months now, but finally, Craig agrees with me-- so I think we might actually do it this time!! I can't wait to move out. It'll be expensive, but it's so worth it, because I've run out of ways to make fun of our flatmate. Now I just can't stand her.

So we've begun the unbearable and torturous quest that is known to all Sydneysiders as "looking for an apartment, and then competing for the one you like." Sydney's rental market is so glutted with prospective tenants and so short on decent places to live that tons of quasi-illegal stuff ends up happening, but tenants have no power to stop it. For example: we saw 5 apartments this past week and two of them were falsely advertised. It's a really terrible competitive process, and all I want is to be moved out before my family gets here. That's my goal; I know it might not be acheivable, but it's what I'm trying for.

In other news, it's been a really social week. That's right. Because I'm never more entertaining than when I'm about to vomit. 2SER, the radio station I...radio (?) at, had a launch party because they moved into new offices. Craig and I caught up with the Final Draft bunch and we drank the free drinks and had a great time. The group headed over to Chinatown (because it's in pondering distance) and we settled down to some noodles, tofu, dumplings, and braised eggplant.

I told someone I was applying to ANU -- in Canberra-- for school, and a Final Drafter named Sara said, "Are you ready to be bored shitless?"

And here, my good, my dear, my forgiving friends, is where I make an ass of myself. You're not surprised, I know, because you have seen how I get. But in case you'd like a reminder, this is essentially what the rest of the conversation sounded like, though admittedly I was a little drunk, so I might be exaggerating a little:

n*: Well, um, no, but I don't find Sydney to be all that intellectually stimulating.

sara: Sydney's totally intellectually stimulating! I go to the theatre every weekend! I have tons of intellectual stimulation here!

n*: (imagine Homer Simpson here) Ooooh- hooo- hooo! The Theatre! Aren't you just clever and brilliant! I'm looking for MORE than just going to the theatre!

sara: And really, it just depends on who you're around; if you don't have any friends, then you will be really bored.

n*: Yeah! Wait. I do TOO have friends!! How dare you, lady?

sara: I wasn't saying you don't have friends--

n*: Pshaw! Anyway, it's just hip to hate on Canberra and say it's boring. Everyone says that--

sara: Yeah, but can you really live in Canberra?

n*: [snicker] I lived in Atlanta, in case you don't know.

sara: Everything's really inaccessible, though, everything's far apart--

n*: So? GET A BIKE! (really too loud)

sara: I'm really safety concious, I don't ride bikes

n*: Oooooh, sure, because your car is really really safe.

sara: I don't own a car.

n*: [silence]

sara: Sydney's just got so many nice restaurants--

And then of course, I pulled out my Ethiopian restaurant card, and the conversation quickly moved on to various other more interesting things. But for a minute there, things got very pointlessly heated. In the end, I didn't prove anything and I acted like an asshole. That side of me gives me such agida, you wouldn't believe. I know y'all back home are used to it, but I thought you should know that Australia hasn't really changed me.

I'm tired of everyone in Sydney acting like I'm an idiot for wanting to go to school. ANU is the best school in the country and has a really good program, but everyone in Sydney acts like deciding to go to school there makes me a boring person. I'm tired of this assumption, that no one likes Canberra, that it's a terrible place to live...

And I keep finding myself defending my choice, even though I'm not sure they're wrong. I might be incredibly bored in Canberra. I think the program I've applied for is great, but it might be awful. I might really regret leaving Sydney. They could be right... but, as you all know, I'm not the kind of woman who's going to let other people know that I'm worried I made the wrong decision. Even if I am worried they might be right.

Last night, Benedict came over to interview me about my book collection-- it's a segment we do, you go to someone's house, get drunk and talk about their books. Benedict's partner Monika came over later and Craig had made a full-on Ethiopian feast, including imitation injera, and we had a lovely night. Oh, there were also anise, almond and fig cookies called "Koala Noses" from The Veganomicon. Adorable. Benedict brought some of his home-brewed beer (an amber ale and an alcoholic ginger beer). It's definitely among the best homebrew we've had the pleasure of tasting & is the kind of thing that inspires you do try your hand at brewing some yourself.

I geeked out about my vintage graphic design books, Craig geeked out over engineering, and Benedict and Monika were incredibly patient with two such nerds as we. This morning I woke up still full, lazy and pleasantly hungover, with a hoarse voice; I haven't felt like that since the best nights with the oldest friends back home.

Moving to Canberra might be harder than I thought.

Pie for you, pie for me!

Sydney's getting crisper by the day and it's starting to feel like it did when we first got here. Which makes me realise we're ever closer to celebrating our first year upside-down and below the equator. We're preparing for the big family visit (in June, my mom, dad, sister, brother-in-law, nephew and niece are all coming to Australia for about a month!!). I'm pretty excited to see everyone again, even though it might be weird to hang with my family for a whole month. I haven't done that since...high school or something. It's going to be a lot of fun seeing everyone-- and I look forward to re-introducing myself to the kiddies (hereafter referred to as "chickens" or perhaps "chooks"). It's been a long time since we've seen them, and I'm worried they don't know us anymore.

Anyway, the little chickens have a lot of allergies, so Craig and I have been researching food they can eat and trying out new recipes. We want to make sure the cute chooks are well-fed and in love with us again before they leave.

This Vegan Key Lime Pie isn't completely allergy-safe yet, but it was pretty delicious. We got the recipe from the Post Punk Kitchen, and the recipe made enough for one pie each!














On Saturday night, it rained and rained. The weather was nasty and the lightning was frightful. But we had a birthday party to attend for the lovely Portia. This picture is from a previous party, but she looks pretty much the same, just a few months more mature.





















It took a cab to Wynyard, taking a rail bus instead of the train because there was trackwork going on, crossing the Harbour and two umbrellas, but in the end, we made it to Lindfield and Portia's party still relatively dry. It was a wonderful time; Aaron supplied some thought-provoking conversation, as usual.

Craig woke up with a hangover on Sunday, because that's what happens when you drink half a bottle of red wine and a Hahn Super-Dry. Consider yourself warned.

If you want to hear what I've been up to on the radio show, check out the podcast. I've just contributed a piece to the Make-Believe show.