I Still Call Australia....Rude! (Part Two)

I would like to take this opportunity to apologize for my fellow Australians social behavior. We, (and by the word 'we' I am speaking on behalf of all the Aussie nationals myself included), are a bunch of rude, combative whinging larrikins. All Australians seem to have a chip on their shoulder. I ask the question; "Why?". Is it -27 outside? No. Is there poverty and crime? Very little. So I ask, why are we the way we are? By no means am I on my soapbox here... I can be included in this broad sweeping generalization. By gosh, for many years, I was the leader of the pack! I wonder how I have made friends during the last 10 years...perhaps, the people I have met are not my actual friends, but are merely scared that if they reject my friendship advances, they will be beaten up and verbally abused by the classiest of all Aussie scrappers...me! In the past 10 days, I have been appalled by the lack of camaraderie and random acts of kindness. Come on, Aussies! Let's be nice to each other again...

This rant comes from a recent altercation with two young twenty-somethings on the streets of Brisvegas. My second night in Brisbane was spent celebrating the birthday of Steve's friend in a Japanese BBQ restaurant called Koh-Ya in the heart of the 'Valley': Fortitude Valley's Chinatown.  Always keen to try to relive my Japanese life, I was enthusiastic to see how this restaurant stood up to Japanese BBQ from the heartland and to see how it fared compared to nouveau Japan "Jap-Couver". I was not disappointed. Chad and I have developed a succinct criteria to which we grade Japanese restaurants: Ratio of Japanese staff with bizarre personality traits, Quirkiness and deliciousness of food on offer and the crappiness of the decor. He was absent from this dining experience, but I feel that he would agree with my analysis.

The crew, eating a delicious meal

Happee Baasudee Tu Yuu!

My rating:

Ratio of Japanese staff with bizarre personality traits: 

All the kitchen staff were quirky and very Japanese.  On this particular evening, there were two birthday's. To celebrate their patron's birthday, the Japanese staff dress up in a myriad of eclectic hats and sing "Happee Basudee" quite enthusiastically and Japanesy. Their 'claps' were centered, had a tinny ring to them and oozed the essence of a teenage girl. Much to the screams of delight from the staff, the birthday patron is then ceremoniously handed a chocolate parfait.

Score: 9.5/10 (-.5 due to the slow service during the celebrations...)

Quirky yet delicious food on offer:

There was a wide range of strange and delicious Japanese food such as beef tongue sashimi (really, just a thinly sliced Burger King pattie), fluffy cabbage salad, Kimchi (Typically a Korean dish, but a staple in Japan) and BBQ Satsuma Age (a-ge). All said dishes are not strange to eat if you have lived in Japan, but to the simple Brisvegas palate, they can be considered 'adventurous'. The WAGYU (A cross between Japanese Black Cow and Australian Angus Cow meat) was tender, melt-in-your-mouth goodness. Not really quirky, but very authentic. A highlight of the meal was the mushrooms cooked in butter and herbs that were placed on the BBQ plate in a little aluminum pot. We topped it off with a slightly sweet CHOYA plum wine. A perfect combination to offset the spiciness of the kimchi and tender beef. However, all menu items were spelled correctly (no 'vagtables' on offer) so I will minus .5.

Score: 9.5/10

Crappiness of Decor:

The decor was sparse and unimaginative. Lots of grey. A random palm in the middle of the room. This is the kind of crappiness that I want, because it means that all the effort is in the food prep.

Score: 10/10

Mushrooms in Buttery Goodness

This restaurant scored quite high on Chad's and my Japanese food scoring grade. It was a wonderful dinner and it made me miss Japan/Jap-Couver dearly. But I digress: I am supposed to be arguing why Aussies are rude bastards!  We exited the restaurant quite happy and satiated (and slightly lightheaded due to the bottle of plum wine). I wandered down to the 'new' Chinatown gate to snap a few pics. People ask my why Brisbane is affectionately dubbed 'Brisvegas'.  The following photos should help explain. Recently and quite shockingly, the old and ornate Chinatown gate was replaced with an electric "gate". It was here that I had my first dose of Aussie Anger (AA).While snapping away at the sparkly Vegas-style lights, I was accosted by two local yokels who wanted a proverbial piece of me. One lad lifted his head back to snort the remainder of the white powder and then slurred a "Hello darlin'. You've got a big camera, haven't you?!" Luckily, Steve was beside me, or else I would have begun to feel a little exposed at this moment. I lost a camera last week so I wasn't feeling like being robbed of my last remaining photo-taking device. Besides, Steve and I were well-versed in smart retorts. "Yes, I have got a big camera," I replied, walking swiftly back to our group. Not a very smart or sarcastic reply, but I wasn't feeling like coming to the party and angering him much more.

"Take a photo of us!" he demanded. 

I turned and took a photo, mostly to laugh at them later with Steve and partly because I figured at this moment it was better to please them than to reply. 

"What's your name? Do you have facebook?" 

"No. I don't believe in the Facebook revolution."

"Yes, you do, you liar. Fuck up, you slut, just fuck up". 

Huh? 

At this point, both Steve and I lost it and laughed maniacally. We both replie that we haven't heard that phrase since circa 1990. Again, not the most witty retort. Lucky for us, he was unable to walk due to his complete inebriation. But this incident got me thinking about how vocal and quick to anger Aussies can be. 

Our two Aussie abusers: seeming happy, but ready to attack at any moment!

Post Food, Pre Abuse = Quite Happy

Shortly after this experience, Steve remarked on my new 'Canadian-ness'. He said, that the Jody he once knew would have jumped at the opportunity to abuse and attempt to fight the two powder-sniffing boys, disregarding my friends personal safety and my own decorum. Is it more of the fact that Australia has always been this way and I have changed? Am I becoming more polite and more Canadian? It is a scary self-revelation. I haven't lived in Australia for 10 years so it is only natural that I would be influenced by the country I live in. But the question remains: Why are Aussies so quick to anger? During this past week in Adelaide, I have been honked at for making mistakes whilst driving and I have received the finger twice in 10 days. The shop attendants have been scowly and have served me with an irritated tone. Even my dear mother drops f-bombs to randoms in the street. We live in such a beautiful place in the world. Share the love, Australia. Get the Christmas spirit happening!

I Still Call Australia...Part One

There are birds chirping. Hibiscus flowers are swaying in the humid wind. Kerry Ann Kennelly is on the telly. It is a balmy 26 degrees at 8:30 am in sunny Brisvegas. My skin feels rehydrated and alive. It is nice to be back in the land of nasal accents and ice cold beers.

The 15 hour direct flight from YVR to Sydney is the best way to travel to this far-away land. Exhausted from the weekend, I slept a good 8 hours on the plane. I didn't get to eat a lot of food the day before I traveled, due to last minute packing stress and a general sense of 'holy shit I cant believe Im leaving to go home for 6 weeks'. I do not understand why it takes me longer to pack my bag after so many years of travel. It should get easier, it should be a streamlined process. But no - I obsess more. I find ways to fit liquid into smaller containers. I create different folding methods to pack in multiple pairs of shoes. This obsession with packing perfectly is killing me!

My flight from YVR left at 11:45pm. I found a little california roll pack that had seen better days and shoveled it down. Even old sushi in Vancouver is still edible. It mildly satiated my need for sustenance. I boarded my flight knowing that I would be eating again in less than 2 hours.

When I fly, I like to order the vegetarian option so that I get my food first and hot. I sit in the aisle, so that when I finish eating, I can easily get up to brush my teeth, and prepare for sleep while everyone else is locked in with their tray tables, like they are sitting on a rollercoaster from hell.  1 hour into the flight the hostess gave me my indian chickpea concoction. Smugly, I settled down to watch 'How to Train Your Dragon' and tucked into my little meat-free dish much to the chargrin of my fellow passengers. After my 3rd bite, I noticed the aircon blowing ice cold wind on my face plummeting my body temperature to below zero so I decided to try to turn it off without having to talk to the person beside me. I refuse to speak to people beside me on the plane. Too many times I have made the mistake of chatting to people to then to be treated with a 9 hour converstation on a myriad of topics such as gun laws, children's birthdays, Obama, and Oprah. Carefully avoiding eye contact with 29B, I balanced my plate in my left hand and I held it out in the aisle while I undid my seatbelt, removed my blanki and stood to manouver the aircon nozzle with my right hand. Now, most of you know that I broke my arm back in May and it is getting strong, but sometimes has spasms at unfortunate times...this was one of these times. My little balls of chickpea flung high in the air and splattered unceremoniously on the ground below. The quinoa salad landed on my seat and my smug expression turned beet red. I tried to clean it up as much as I could, but the rice just mushed further into the carpet and the small quinoa balls wedged themselves firmly to the stitching of the seat. I slumped unhappily hungry in my seat and began to pray for a problem-free flight from here in. I popped 2 sleeping pills to induce a coma-like state to forget my nigling hunger. I awoke 4 hours later sweating and nauseated. My stomach was growling...hypoglycemic, I imagined myself violently vomiting and passing out in my mushy rice aisle. I stripped down to my sports bra and began fanning myself with the safety card (in my opinion, the only thing that card is useful for is fanning one's body in times of great duress. The brace position wont save you in a burning plane). The passing hostess saw my panic and swooped in to see if I was okay. "Just a little hungry," I replied. She swiflty brought me a cookie and ginger ale thus saving me from an impending hypoglycemic coma. What is the moral of this story? Always read your safety card and know when to use it.

Steven, my oldest friend met me in Brisvegas airport. Like all true old mates, we swiftly fell into a groove and within minutes it felt like we had been living down the road from each other for the last 27 years playing cars in his backyard. We cracked our first beer by the Christmas tree: it was a Montieth Summer's Ale. It tasted like a refreshing ginger beer.

 After that, we cruised down to Paddington Street to sit on the open patio of Iceworks bar. Across the road, people were gathering for the U2 concert. It was fun to people watch; it is still quite çold for Brisbane standards and it amused me to no end that some people were in winter boots and jeans. My most disturbing fashion discovery is that most Brisvegas men are now in short, tight jean shorts...leaving little to the imagination. It is a longer version of the budgie smuggler. Budgie smugglers for the urban professional. "But this is the land of the rising redneck!" I exclaim. Steven says that 10 years ago any man in tight shorts would have been beaten for wearing such monstrosities. But recently, little Brisvegas is going through a slight ''renassiance''...   Cheers to Brissy!

At the Iceworks bar, we tucked into a duck and plum sauce pizza with a watercress salad on top. Then, we moved on to a restaurant called Lark where we ate mussels in garlic and white wine sauce and calamari.

Cocktails in Australia are $16 so we only had one. We finished the night with a 2006 Grant Burge Holy Trinity GSM by the Christmas Tree while watching reruns of Summer Heights High..It was a great way to begin my Aussie tour downunder. I dont have the star quality like Oprah, but I will try to blog as much as I can about my time here to inspire you all to make the trip here someday.