Reflections on Melbourne - May 2007

My job took me to Melbourne in May and the thing I remember the most is the boredom. Australia is very like the United States. Flying fifteen hours to get to a place the reminds me of a cross between Baltimore and Las Vegas makes me cranky.

I stayed at this big hotel casino very like any big Las Vegas hotel casino with lots of gaming, fancy shops and restaurants. The first day, my business associate did the first of two non-boring things in Melbourne. We saw the Collingwood v. Carlton Aussie rules football match at the Melbourne Cricket Grounds.

Australian football is weird. They play on a round field with no pads – just shorts and tanktops. Each quarter is thirty minutes long and each quarter seems to begin and end with opposing team members beating the crap out of each other. They just punch each other while the umpires blow their whistles without intervening in any way. Eventually the guys get tired of punching each other and the game resumes. I wonder what would happen if they didn’t get tired of punching each other. I didn’t understand the game at all. It was more like soccer than football but they ran with the ball in their hands and they could stop and kick it any time they wanted.

One night my business associate wanted to go walk around and take some photographs so we did. A couple of young guys were teaching par cours to a lot of young people. They took a running jump at this big fake Aztec pyramid looking thing and attempted to vault over it. Most of them ended up planting their hands at the top of the wall and climbing over, but the fact they were doing it was cool enough.

After the par cours kids left we sat at the bottom of the pyramid and watched the Worst Juggler in the Universe create a ladder of crates upon which he stood and dropped juggling objects (bowling pins, balls of various sizes) down to his assistant below. I think the idea was that he would be juggling from the great and treacherous height, but it's hard to juggle when one can only throw and not catch. My business associate took some pictures of these guys. I thought about telling him not to, knowing that street performers usually expect compensation for being photographed, but ultimately I decided that it was not my problem. I had forgotten about the Worst Juggler in the Universe until much later when we were on a very different part of the river, heading back to the hotel when the Worst Juggler in the Universe accosted Michael and the crosswalk.

"Hi mate, I noticed you were taking some video of my show back there."

"It was just some stills."

"Well, you see, mate, I'm usually compensated for my image. I have a business. I can get you a card. My attorney..."

"I'll delete them."

"But..."

My associate turned his back on the Worst Juggler in the Universe and didn't look back. I was ready to jump in just in case the skinny hippy looking kid took a swing, but he didn't. Not that my associate couldn't have handled him anyway.

The rest of the trip seemed to consist of me sitting in the Internet Cafe, wandering around looking for things to do that did not involve alcohol and not finding them. Not finding them, I ended up sitting in my room a lot eating room service, watching television and drinking alcohol.

The last day we took a play day in the Yarra Valley wine region. Our driver and guide was an old lady named Anne Marie who wasn't afraid to cuss and needed a cigarette every time we stopped. I liked Anne Marie. She took us to Chandon first. Chandon specializes in sparkling wines. I don't usually care for sparkling wines. The next stop was more agreeable and I ended up buying a nice bottle of merlot. The third stop was the Healesville Sanctuary, a wild animal park where we saw a very short (as it was raining) birds of prey show and jogged through half an hour of whatever animals we could see. We saw dingoes, platypi, kangaroos, wallabies and wombats. I stood about six feet from a koala that ignored me completely while chowing down on eucalyptis.

After two more wineries Anne Marie brought us back to the hotel and I flew home the next day.

A two-year-old kicked me the entire sixteen hour flight from Sidney. Wow.

Thanks for playing.

Random Reflections on Amsterdam: April 2007

I'm flipping through my notebook, bored out of my mind in Garden Grove, CA and this is what I found from my recent time in Amsterdam:

4.24.07

This morning, the man at the porter's desk at the hotel asked me if I wanted a Playboy or a Hustler when I presented my newspaper voucher. I must have been a bit groggy having just woken up even though it was just after 10 AM, because I couldn't think of a response to pornography humor. Then again, I always find discussing pornography with strangers to be uncomfortable.

I sat in Amsterdam's Vondelpark, on a bench near the water, enjoying the shade and the birdsong. I should just make a list of everything I have seen today. I saw several high school kids around the train station. I saw two that appeared to be twins, girls wearing identical flowing red tops. They wore matching white hijabs.

I saw a pet store. The call them BEESTEBOLs here and in its window was a pretty, young, brown tabby cat.

I found my way to the Museumplein and stopped at the Albert Heijn supermarket where I bought water, an orange drink, an apple and a box of matches because I liked the swallow design on the box. Thus provisioned, I wandered onto the Vondelpark where I saw saw plenty of dogs; dachsunds and hounds and min-pins and rotties. The Dutch seem to love their dogs as much as their bicycles.

5.2.07 (after I returned home)

I'm now remembering early Saturday evening when outside many of the cafes I passed, I saw their staffs enjoying a meal together. This seemed to mean that the cafes were closed, so I went on up to a bar on the corner, a block from the cafe where I wanted to dine later.

I ordered a large Amstel and enjoyed it while reading the New Yorker. I had not been sitting there terribly long when I finished the Amstel and thought i should try another beer. I noticed that the bartender, a very tall, very pale Dutch kid with a bush of almost white hair, was pouring a lot of Wiekse, a light beer, and almost no Amstel. I asked him for a glass, noting that it seemed popular.

"Just because it's popular doesn't mean it's good," the bartender said. I asked him if any of his other beers were good. He said that the Le Chouffle was good, but that I would not be allowed to have a large glass. I presumed that this was due to a high alcohol content, but I thought it was funny that in a city where I could buy mushrooms for hallucinating and any number of cannabis products, I couldn't have a large glass of strong beer. The beer was light and fruity but with enough body to make one feel that one was drinking a beer rather than champagne.

I worked on a sudoku puzzle while I drank it, but it did not take long and soon I had settled up and moved on to the La Brace restaurant where I enjoyed a wonderful meal (except for the salad that was dressed with what I could only describe as exactly like my mother's potato salad dressing.

My last night in Amsterdam, I decided to try to a meal at the Cafe on the Corner, a place that I remember quite well from my first trip to Amsterdam back in September. It was always packed each time I walked by, so I never tried it. This trip was no exception so when on Sunday evening I passed it, finding it (the outdoor seating area) empty, but for three guys drinking beer, I took a seat and ordered a glass of beer, a large glass of beer.

A note on sitting outside in Amsterdam cafes: I was really intimidated by this at first. I didn't do it at all during my 2006 trip. It seemed like only the coolest local people were sitting outside. This year I started out by asking if I could sit outside. When the servers looked at me like I was from Mars (or the U.S.) and said "Of course," I decided to just walk up and sit down. Everywhere that I did this, eventually a cafe employee would come up and take my order. So my advice: when you're in Amsterdam and you want to sit outside, just sit the hell down. It's okay.

So this server at the Cafe on the Corner says "Do you want the big one? The REALLY big one?" I asked her to bring me the really big one and looked at the menu behind my head. When the server returned, I ordered the half roasted chicken. Later, it was brought to me with a large pile of french fries, which, to my horror, lay beneath a large dollop of mayonaise. I thought I might vomit. So yeah, I don't understand the Dutch and their need for frietsausse.

Thanks for playing.