Bateux Jouets! French for Boy Toats!

The National Maritime Museum in Sydney is holding a free exhibition of vintage French and German Toy Boats; Craig and I went to it yesterday. It was so cool to see all these tiny boats that actually floated and (amazingly) went all on their own, using a rubber band, steam, or wet battery for power. Some of these were just little wooden boats with little sails, but some were 2 ft. long and made of sheet metal. They have hardwood decks, guns that actually shoot blanks, life rafts, torpedoes that can actually be shot off! It's amazing to see the skill that went into making these boats on such a miniature scale, especially when you consider these were mass-produced toys. Well, they were produced in artisan factories, but still. Large scale production of incredible craftsmanship.

We had a blast. Craig looks pouty, but it's just because I made him sit in the girl's spot.








































We didn't get to see much of the Maritime Museum's regular collection, but we'll definitely go back, because what we did see...was awesome.

Example: some crazy Australian traveled over something like 3 continents on a bike and in a boat. When he was on land, he rode the bike with the boat attached. Coolest vehicle ever.

















The Australians are really proud of their contribution to the World Wars, and considering they were so far away from danger, it really is amazing they went at all. Oh, right, sure they were under the crown and were required by the monarchy to serve. And then the monarchy pretty much ditched them with no support whatsoever when the Japanese tried to attack Australia. Which led to them becoming their own damn country, thank you.

Where was I? Right, they are very proud of their contribution, so there are lots of memorials to the ANZAC brigade; the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps. The ANZAC memorial, pictured below, is in the beautiful Hyde Park. Also, the bridge behind Craig in the post about Glebe is the ANZAC bridge. It flies the Australian flag at one end and the New Zealand flag at the other, and it's the longest cable-stayed bridge in the world! Of course, there are also the inimitable ANZAC biscuits–delicious, oatie, wattle-seeded cookies. What's wattle seed, you ask? I'm so glad. Why, they are seeds that lend the biscuits "the unique flavour of the Australian bush." Lovely.

The ANZAC memorial:
















The ANZAC bridge:
















I finally got around to taking some pictures of our place today; I know you're excited.

Our bedroom is pretty big, and it gets really bright in the daytime





















We have two wardrobes, with plenty of storage space on top. The ceiling is really nice and high.





















This space is going to be a shared office for me, Craig and our housemate. We're working on it...
















Behind this stuff is where Sarah has partitioned her room, but she hasn't let us see it yet, because she's straightening up.
















This is our living area downstairs





















And our eating area





















This is our kitchen






















Sarah is crazy for Post-It notes, but it's a far nicer kitchen than anywhere else we've seen in our budget.
















That's the tour for now; if you want to see anything in detail, you gotta come down under!!

I love the whole world, too.

Thanks to the lovely and brilliant Judith, for sending me this amazing video. It's a Discovery Channel ad, and you all know I'm not usually the sort who gushes over advertisements. Especially when those advertisements are for TV channels.

But this one made me cry. It made me joyous that I'm here, and broken-hearted to be so far away.



A few people have asked, so for those of you that wish to show (in parcel form) how much you love us:

Craig and/or Nija
643 Elizabeth St.
Waterloo NSW 2017
Australia

Craig and I miss you all, and we love you. As well as, of course, the whole wide world.

Thanks, Judith.

'Ello, Black Magic...

When I was about to move here, I read up a lot on Australia, and I learned all kinds of terrifying information on the wildlife here. I read about killer spiders and jellyfish, poisonous snakes that jump out of trees and the ravenous rabbit population.

None of that prepared me for how wild this country truly is. Examples follow.

1. I was in the Cole's Shopping Village with my housemate. This is basically a giant grocery store, like Kroger. The two of us are walking along, and this 65 year old man walks directly between us, and says to me, "'Ello, Black Magic." Can you believe it??! I mean, it's one thing to be hit on by an old Australian man, but the racist pick-up line is truly rare.

It's so amazing, because I've never been called Black in the States, of course. Here, Aboriginal people are called Black. And even though I'm Indian, everyone just assumes I'm Aboriginal because I'm darker than most Aboriginals. Most Aboriginals are only half-Aboriginal or less, so they're not as dark as a 100% Indian beauty like me. So, here, I'm Black....Black Magic, no less.

But, it's not just a racist thing to be called Black here. An Aboriginal friend of ours, BJ, was the first person to tell me I was Black here. I was asking about the rough area of town, which is of course, predominantly Aboriginal. He said the area wasn't bad, and that it has a bad reputation because people have a lot of racist ideas. Then he said, "But you've definitely got nothing to worry about because you're Black." I said, "Ummm, well actually, I'm Indian. Well, my parents are both Indian." And he said, "Yeah, that's the same as Aboriginal. You're Black."

Seriously, folks, this place is out of control. I may never understand it...

2. There's this one stretch of lebanese restaurants in our neighborhood; most of them are really good. But right next to this stretch of restaurants, there's this room. This room is always closed up during the day, and its windows are always curtained. But at night, you can sometimes get a glimpse through the doorway. This room is about the bleakest thing I have ever seen. At night, this room always has a few old Lebanese or possibly Turkish men in it. They are not having a social party. Some of them are drinking tea all alone; we have not seen any tea-making facilities. Once in a while, two of the old men will be quietly talking. It is lit only by fluorescent lights, there are a few folding card tables and folding chairs in it. There is no TV. There is nothing on the walls save a poster of Cyndi Lauper. We think there may be a microwave. This room has no readily understandable purpose. Why would old men go to this room?

So what have we learned today? Even a place as similar to America as Australia has already presented its share of really odd situations to me. Did you know Australia just stole the title of World's Fattest Country from America? I think it was probably me and Craig being here that tipped the scales...

Cockatoo Island

On Sunday, Craig and I went to Cockatoo Island, which is Sydney's largest island. The island was originally used as a prison. The barracks where the convicts were kept are still on the island; they were built by the convicts themselves.

Eventually it became clear that the convicts were living in seriously inhumane conditions, so the prison was moved to Darlinghurst. After that, the Australian government, in a move that can only be described as...inscrutable, decided to turn the inhumane prison into a boarding school for wayward girls. Interesting development, no? Also, there was a school for wayward boys on a boat tethered to the island. I don't want to shock your pristine sensibilities, but it is a matter of historical fact that there were many inappropriate meetings between the boys and girls. Surely, hindsight is 20/20, but anyone could have seen that coming, right?

Later, the island became a shipyard and much of Australia's wartime shipbuilding went on at Cockatoo Island. Then the island was closed to the public until 2007; now it's an art venue for the Biennale. There's a free ferry from Sydney Harbour to Cockatoo Island–I love how much free stuff this city puts together.

Amazingly, most of the giant ship building equipment and old buildings are still there, so the whole island looks like industrial art. It's amazing...

Most of the art on Cockatoo Island was video installation stuff, but honestly we found the industrial stuff much more interesting.

Out with the Pope, in with the Vote!

Hello again, lovely readers! I can tell you all miss me by the truly excellent emails I've been getting–thank you. I have gotten a truly thought-provoking discussion on the consequences of a completely dark and terrifying Batman movie, and not one person wrote me all pissed off about spoiling the movie...I knew you all really loved us.

Down here, the Pope has delightfully departed, though not without his requisite patronizing of Aboriginals and sexual abuse victims. Of course, I couldn't ask Sydneysiders to have a better response to the whole irritating event than this:






















Actually, during World Youth Day, the police were given "special powers" to "detain and remove" anyone who "annoyed" the Youths. Including wearing "offensive" t-shirts. Of course, the civil liberties folks here quickly took that to task and got the special powers overturned, due to the limitations on free speech (snap!) So Iemma (NSW's Premier) suffered a little extra mud on his face. Brilliant. We then saw tons of people wearing shirts that said, "Fuck the Pope. With a condom." Now friends, this is not my particular brand of subtle humor, but worth noting regardless.

I was a little concerned when I heard about the cops here being given special powers to defend the ears and eyes of Mr. Pope's entourage. But then I saw the cop cars here. They are adorable! Little lime green fuel-efficient four-doors with blue and white checks! They would make the best rain boots. Look how cute:
















Craig and I have been doing our fair share of sightseeing lately, still just in South Sydney. We like to call it the South Syde. So that we can pretend, for the first times in our lives, that we keeps it real.

First off, we hit Glebe; it's pronounced "gleeb," and it's one of the first neighborhoods founded in Sydney. In fact, Sydney's first Reverend was given it as a piece of churchland (which is called, shockingly enough, a glebe), so it was the home of Sydney's first church. Actually, just this very kind of uninspired naming is a bit of an illness in Australia. Everything just gets named for what it very obviously is: the Harbour Bridge actually does bridge the harbour! The Opera House frequently houses Operas. It's a little boring, honestly. They need some ATL-style naming talent here...like "Stone Mountain." Now that was clever.

Though the name lacks creativity, Glebe is a beautiful little neighborhood, not least because it houses the lovably small, the gloriously ambitious Gleebooks – easily the best bookstore we've found yet. They're going to host David Sedaris and David Rakoff there in the next few months. I only had to move across the world to see NY's finest writers in a small, intimate venue. Ridiculous. Some of Sydney's earliest, largest, and most gorgeous mansions are in Glebe; it's got an Inman Park feel, but the amazing thing is every street either leads to water or to the city, creating the perfect mix of natural and citified beauty. Illustrated below:

Ignore the girl yapping in the foreground, and kindly note the Sydney skyline.

















Then, a short walk down Glebe's main road takes you to the Bay. In a place like Sydney, taking amazing photos of natural beauty almost feels too easy. I cannot believe I live here. It's astounding.





















Ways Australians are not like us:

1. They have no concept of safety. In Glebe, there's a public footpath next to the bay, with a ladder ostensibly placed so as to make hopeful suicides more successful. There is no signage, no rail, no information whatsoever about who is supposed to use this ladder and who is not. Anyone can just climb down. And I mean anyone:





















2. As we all know, corporations have decided that certain colours denote certain foods. Example: Cheeze flavoured things are often in bright orange packaging. Barbecue flavoured things are often in red packaging. This is so without even reading the package, we can tell the chips in this bag are either cheezy or barbecue...y. Now, we all know that there is often no truly defensible reason for these associations between colour and flavor. But the whole concept comes into bizarrely sharp focus here, because the colour green here, my friends...

The colour green means...Wait for it...

Chicken.

I know! It's crazy! Who even wants to eat chicken flavoured potato chips? Why green? It's a graphic design/gastronomic confusion for the ages!!

Well, I was intending to post some pictures of our cute little place and our lovely housemate, but she's currently suffering from some pretty severe throat illness. I don't think she's up for taking pictures. Patience pays, friends.

Now, finally...the moment you've been waiting for: we are unveiling our top five favorite blog title suggestions. There's a poll at the top right of our blog – let the voting begin!

Coming soon: Craig and Nija's Wild Adventures on Cockatoo Island!

If there was any doubt...

My email address hasn't changed, so if you emailed me a month ago and it seemed to work, it still should. However, if you want to be cutting-edge, you can write to me at craig [at] student.unsw.edu.au, but that's awfully long. The following still work and all go to the same place, so I probably won't even notice which one you use: cmj {at} wrek.org, krg /at/ gatech.edu, duckwalkkrg :at: gmail.com. (Please replace "at" and the weird punctuation in those addresses with @.)

Craig

RIP Jim Gordon

Good evening from SYD!

We've had a great day--got a lot of stuff done. Mostly errands, but it felt really good. Why does accumulating possessions make you feel like you're building a home for yourself?

A certain killer designer (and teacher of mine) once told me about some other designer (who is really well-known in the skate-culture design world) who ended up at the age of 35 feeling like he never grew up because he had no decent possessions and no roots due to years of following skate culture. Why do we need our stuff to show our age?

Ah, well...existential questions later, I suppose.

1. started building the IKEA furniture--awesome.
2. got electrician to fix the stove, which was a Pyrrhic victory: it turns out it wasn't really broken, we just didn't know how to work it. He replaced a valve anyway, but I think he was just trying to make us not feel like idiots.
3. figured out that our water heater is spewing massive amounts of steaming hot water under our back porch. Awesome for the electric bill. Hopefully we'll get that sorted soon.
4. got a space heater and a cheap quilt!

And oh yeah. We just saw The Dark Knight. hahahahaha!