I Still Call Australia... Friendly and Relaxing: Part Three

As much as I bitch and moan about Australia being rude, it sure is nice to be having a hot Christmas and seeing old mates. There is nothing better than meeting up with an old friends and chatting like no time has passed at all. Perhaps there are a few more smile lines around the old eyes, an extra kilo or two around the waist, but the conversation with old friend flows freely like Coopers Pale Ale at the Exeter.

My time in Brisbane was brief (too brief), but my last night was a super chilled gastronomic explosion: Angus beef, tasty cheese and Maggie Beers quince paste from the Rosalie Gourmet Market topped off with a 2008 Grant Burge Filsell Old Vine Shiraz.

Even the elephant got in the act!

It is always nice to land in my home town of Adelaide. I consider Adelaide my oldest and dearest friend; always cheery and calming. My favourite moment is when the clouds part and I see the northern most suburbs from the small window of the plane. But the moment when I see the twinkling blue ocean is the moment when I know that I have arrived home.

My family always greets me at the airport. I was once greeted by my Pop with a small esky of home brew beer that we cracked open on the way home from the airport. It was only 9am when my plane landed this time, so beer was not on offer the morning I arrived, but it was promptly drunk at "Beer-o'clock"; usually, anytime after 12pm in his household.

I was lucky enough to catch my old friend Aimee when she returned to Adelaide for a brief visit. Unfortunately for me, my family now lives 45 minutes from the city of Adelaide, so I couldn't join her in the Christmas wine that she was consuming at our favourite pub on Rundle Street, The Exeter, because I had to drive home. However, she kept me entertained for hours with her amusing tales of 'life in university' and 'life in Bathurst'. A delicious meal at Cafe Micheal 2 was almost not had; restaurants in Adelaide close promptly at 9pm (a clear sign that I am not in North America anymore). We arrived at 9:05pm and my approach was 'Gosh, Adelaide sucks'. Thankfully, hers was more articulate and convincing. Luckily, Aimee still has her magical powers of persuasion and we managed to convince them to seat us. The duck and lychee red curry was my personal favourite, but every dish was cooked to perfection.

Duck Red Curry with Lychee = YUM!

It was so much fun to see Aimee. Her vivacious personality is infectious and I love spending time with her when I come home to Australia. After dinner, we sat at the Austral for old times sake and drank the rest of the sparkling burgundy wine that we ordered at dinner. In Adelaide, if you order a bottle of wine at a restaurant and you don't finish it by the end of the meal, you are allowed to take the bottle with you as long as it is re-corked. We improvised and shoved a serviette in the top and then snuck it over to drink it sitting on the outside seats of the Austral. I must say, I used to work at the Austral and it is disappointingly ferral these days. People were running amok. One group of sloshed middle-aged men came up to us and asked where to party. We both looked blankly at each other and replied that we didn't know. It was a sobering moment: no longer are we the queens of nightlife, partying as we once were in 1995. Gone are the days of buying a bottle of Seaview Brut sparkling wine at the Royal Oak Hotel bottle-o and asking for 2 plastic cups so that we could sip it on the walk into the city. We used to have a club date from Thursday to Sunday and religiously we would party until all hours every weekend. Times, they are a-changing. We don't really want that lifestyle anymore, but I think we both took a moment to morn the loss of our reckless lifestyle and lack of responsibility that we had as Adelaide University students.

Since then, I have been filling my days with beach walks. Beaches are quite close and I have been taken by the Grange to Henley beach jetty walk. It is approximately 4.5 km's and it is the perfect way to spend an early morning. It is my aim to see the ocean as much as possible while I am here. 

Beware of snakes at Semaphore beach!

On this Christmas eve, I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. So, where ever you are in the world, enjoy your day tomorrow!

Jody xx

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.