AK All Day

Throwin' some 'video killed the real blog' Kleinballs

2010-03-02T22:25:00.000+11:00

I could be writing about other stuff. I should be writing about other stuff. More substantial stuff. I have a huge backlog of photos on my camera that I should be uploading. There's plenty of news to share. I do, after all, have some huge changes coming up. But I'm being lazy. So enjoy as I throw down some video Kleinballs!

Tying a bow on the end of the Winter Olympics, we look back at Australia's first ever winter gold, just eight years ago. I'm not sure if this is a fitting way for a desert nation to win its first gold or an embarrassing way. Either way, it's pretty funny.

As the regular season for Rugby League approaches, the league recently put on an inaugural NRL All Stars versus Aboriginal All Stars match. And Wendell Sailor – one of the more colorful characters in the league, and who's about to retire – treated us an absolutely hilarious try celebration. There certainly have been better touchdown celebrations in the NFL (Merton Hanks is an all time favorite for me), but you usually don't see overly flamboyant celebrations in rugby. So the shock factor, combined with the fact that Sailor scored the try for the Aboriginal All Stars – you'll see in the video why this latter point is relevant – just sent this one through the roof.*

*Hmmmm... a few weeks removed from this game, I just watched this video for the first time in a week or so. And I'm not so sure the hilarity's going to translate. Just trust me – there's a strong dose of hilarity in there.

Working for a training services company, with one of our core competencies being in leadership development, I read and view quite a bit of leadership-related content on the Internet. I'll concede that I could have found this video on leadership so brilliant because most of the other stuff I come across is so humorless, but... well, no... it's pretty good.

Have a random video you'd like to share? Why don't we continue throwin' these Kleinballs in the comments! Because heaven knows we don't all already have enough places to share inane links and videos.

Back in America: Parts 3, 4 and, well, ∞

2010-02-18T11:26:00.000+11:00

In July 2008, there was Part 1.

In April 2009, there was (unofficially) Part 2.

And now, well, there really aren't any more Parts. It's Parts 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and beyond. Right to infinity.

I came to Sydney on September 14, 2007. And starting in May, I make my permanent (yet phased) exit.

To paraphrase the words Michael Jordan so eloquently used to announce his comeback, and the same ones I referenced in this blog's first post:

I'M BACK (IN AMERICA)

Much, much, much more to follow in the coming weeks and months. Until then, I leave you with this:

On KFC, Australian "racism" and American egocentricity

2010-02-10T22:12:00.003+11:00

Several weeks ago, you may have heard about the controversy here over a KFC ad that was deemed by some people outside of Australia as insensitive at best, racist at worst. And many of you have likely already seen the ad, and perhaps have even heard plenty of people offer their unsolicited opinion. But even if you have, humor me here and read on; I think I'm in the position to have a unique perspective.

First, have a look at the ad:

From an American's perspective, in a vacuum, and without any context, this doesn't look good, right? Insensitive (or racist) Australians, right?

Well, not entirely. But before I can explain my rationale, we need to take a step back.

Australia has an ugly, ugly, ugly history with the people native to the land, the Aborigines. There is no denying this. Nor is there any denying that relations to this day, despite some good intentions from both sides, remain strained.

So there's that. But that's not what this post is about.

This post actually starts with the US, and its own history. Then it moves to Australia, and this country's interpretation/ignorance of that history. And then it ends by moving back to the US, and the reaction of the American people and media to that interpretation/ignorance.

Clearly, the US has as much – if not more – ghosts in the closet than Australia when it comes to its own race relations. And while those relations have improved over the years, just as they have in Australia, there are plenty of sensitivities that stew just beneath the surface of day-to-day life in the US. Those come to a head very frequently; for an example, look no further than the quotes from Harry Reid about Barack Obama that recently became public, and the subsequent media and political outcry.

It's an uber-sensitive society, filled with complexities that take a lifetime to appreciate, and one which has no sympathy for – and practically preys upon – just the slightest slips of the tongue.

Back to Australia. I've often described Australian culture as the intersection of English tradition and American pop culture. The connection to the English past goes so deep that time and time again, Australians have voted down becoming a republic, which would necessitate cutting all ties from the British Commonwealth. So to this day, the Queen of England still technically rules the country. But you turn on a TV in primetime or go to the movies or go to a newsstand, and odds are that you'll be consuming American-produced content. I was once told that my American accent wasn't exotic (if you will) because I "sound like TV".

This is all just a long way of saying that Australians are exposed to a lot of American culture.

But here's the problem: Australians don't really get American culture. Like I said, it's a complex society that takes a lifetime to appreciate. So without actually living in it, Australians' understanding of it is completely superficial. And that's where things get dangerous.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard an Australian casually throw around the n-word. Every time, it's grating to my ears. And yet every time, I have to remind myself that there are no bad intentions. They've heard it from a TV show or a movie or a song, and so they emulate it. But there are no racist intentions at all, certainly not like you'd infer if an American white person casually used it in conversation. If anything, Australians' use of the word is simply out of ignorance: ignorant of the history of the word, of how much pain it causes, of what it means today. Of course, it's the American media that we have to blame for this; no use of the n-word in the media would mean no misuse of the word by those who don't understand it.

But. If an American without this perspective visits Australia and hears that word – especially if an African American hears that word – we have a situation begging to blow up.

Which brings me full circle to this latest controversy. Or kind of. Because to get to that, I first I want to tackle another controversy from a few months earlier – also regarding Australian "racism" – that received a fair amount of media attention as well.

A popular variety show from the 70s, 80s and 90s, Hey Hey It's Saturday, had a few reunion shows back in September and October. And on one of the shows, with Harry Connick Jr in attendance as a guest, a group called the Jackson Jive performed a skit. Watch the skit and Connick Jr's initial reaction (until about the 2:45 mark), and then his more blunt opinion (from about 5:25 to 6:40)*:

*Don't want to watch it all? Here's the Cliff's Notes version:

A group of guys come out, dressed as the Jackson Five (even though, strangely, there are six of them), and perform a cover of "Can You Feel It". Unfortunately, the five guys who aren't Michael – again, not sure about the math there – are wearing blackface. The guy playing Michael is wearing, ummmmm, whiteface? (If you can call it that? Whatever. You get the point.) And Connick Jr, who's judging the performance, is less than impressed. While his distaste for the skit is somewhat understated at first, the host of the show gives him an opportunity a few minutes later to fully express his opinion, and he uses that time to make a more pointed statement in which he tries put the history of blackface in context.

This created a huge firestorm here, with Connick Jr stuck right in the middle. Yet amazingly, I found that most people sided against Connick Jr: "He doesn't understand our culture! We don't take anything seriously! How dare he project the sensitivities of his own culture onto us!"

I said it at the time: that is the worst justification ever. Seriously. The second you try to emulate something from another culture, the onus is on you to make sure you're not breaking that culture's rules.* The guys who put on that skit broke some serious rules, and they – along with everyone else who refuses to see why it was harmful – need to make a respectful effort to educate themselves on the history of blackface in America.

*It's like when you go to another country; you obey LOCAL laws, regardless of how absurd they might be to your own sensibilities. I don't see anyone bringing chewing gum to Singapore, unless they'd like that government to go Michael Fay on their ass.

Bottom line, that skit was insanely insensitive. And that's even before factoring in that it was only three months after Michael Jackson had died. THREE MONTHS!

And finally – finally! – we come back to what started this whole post: the KFC cricket ad. Just in case you need to refresh your memory, here again is the ad in question:

Again, in a vacuum, this ad looks pretty bad, perhaps as bad as the Jackson Jive skit.

But here's the thing: after the ad made its way onto YouTube, Americans watched it in that vacuum and took it way out of context.

Hmmm. I'm not sure italics on that "way" emphasizes my point enough. How about repeating it a few times, with bolded, italicized caps on the last one? And let's stretch out that last one, too: Way, way, WAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYY out of context.

Let's take another step back: I am an American, through and through. I love my country. I wouldn't trade my nationality for anything in the world. Despite some of the baggage that comes with it, especially living internationally, it's a source of pride for me. Having said that, America is a ridiculously insular culture. It's something that has always disturbed me, and this insularity rears its ugly head with all too much frequency.* It's done it again here.

*Fortunately, most of these occurences are pretty inane. Take, for example, the following passage from a Joe Posnanski blog entry a few months ago, in which he recounts a dinner with a friend:

One of the topics of discussion was how at any given time there is always one person who is widely considered the funniest person in the world (or America, anyway). This isn't necessarily the person WE think is the funniest person in the world; I've already told you I don't think Robin Williams is all that funny. It's more like the national plus international consensus. We did not spend a lot of time on the dates (and I should say here that I added a few names that Michael might not agree with) but we generally think the funniest person in the world title has, at one time or another, been the following people.

– Richard Pryor
– George Carlin
– Chevy Chase
– John Belushi
– Eddie Murphy
– Robin Williams
– Billy Crystal
– Dana Carvey
– Mike Myers
– Jerry Seinfeld
– Jim Carrey
– Adam Sandler
– Jon Stewart
– Will Ferrell
– Tina Fey

You all know I love me some Posnanski. Seriously... the man crush runs deep. But I couldn't help but note the absolutely insane hypocrisy in this passage. First he concedes that this list of the funniest people "in the world" may be just confined to America. Okay... so it's just the funniest people in America, I guess? But then he says three times – not once, not twice, but THRICE! – that it's an international list. Right... so now it IS the funniest people in the world. But THEN he goes on to list 15 comedians, all of whom were popularized by American culture! Riiiiiiiiight.

Anyway. Where was I? Ah yes – the KFC commercial.

Let's provide all the context that almost no one in America would know prior to viewing this ad:

It's currently cricket season in Australia.
The West Indian cricket team is in Australia to play some matches.
KFC is a major sponsor of Australian cricket.
As a major sponsor of Australian cricket, KFC is running a series of cricket-related ads.
In each of the ads that KFC is running, Mick, the main character, is faced with some sort of inane obstacle that's preventing him from enjoying his cricket. So he uses the apparent magical power of KFC chicken to get others to shut the hell up so he can get back to the cricket.
The ad in question is the only one in this series that features people from the West Indies. Not African Americans, mind you: West Indians.

So. There's that.

To me, this comment from this article on Media Bistro sums it up brilliantly:

Sorry Americans. It only the guilt of your hundreds of years of oppression against blacks that is apparent here. The stereotype of an African American having an affinity with fried chicken is an AMERICAN stereotype, fostered by AMERICANS and spread through popular culture by Americans.

KFC are a major sponsor of the summer cricket in Australia. It also happens that the West Indies are one of two touring teams this summer (including Pakistan) and the blacks depicted are West Indies fans. It really isn't a stretch to see this ad in its context as a supporter sitting solo amongst the opposition supporters and getting them onside by buying lunch. The rest is your guilty minds looking for somebody else to blame for a stereotype you created (and that only exists outside America thanks to American comedians whose black people/fried chicken jokes have made it outside your country).

Get a grip and get off your high horse.

The ad has nothing to do with African Americans, or the American stereotype that black people like fried chicken. But why confuse the American media with the facts when they can take it out of context, interpret it as they want, and blow the whole thing out of proportion? And we get to where we are today.*

*Frankly, I'm shocked that there's never been an outcry in the US about, ahem, Coon cheese. Exhibit A, B and C.**

Yeah. Context.

**If you click on ANY link throughout this insanely long post, please make it any (or all) of these. Classic Australian commercials.

Is Australia racist? Short answer: no. But if it wants to emulate the US – as it does with regular frequency, and as the Jackson Jive did – then it better make a concerted effort to understand it.*

*Ironically, the Aussies just got to try the shoe on the other foot when these idiots from Russia did a little Aborigines on Ice routine.

Do I expect this to give the entire nation perspective on the whole Jackson Jive thing? No. But still.

But America has some introspection to do as well, and it better realize that before passing judgment on others – as the media did with this KFC ad – then it too needs to stop being so egocentric and understand other cultures.

And then we can all put some shrimp on the barbie and gobble down some Coon cheese.

Throwin' some parental Kleinballs

2010-01-25T17:26:00.000+11:00

The parents have arrived in Sydney! Spent the weekend with them, and on Thursday we head off to Adelaide and the Flinders Ranges. It'll be my first time in the actual Outback, so should be good... although beastly hot.

Speaking of beastly hot, it was 42°C (108°F) in Sydney on Saturday. Then we got a thunderstorm. Then we got some hail.* An hour later, the temperature had dropped by 15°C (27°F).

*I've only seen hail twice in Australia. Each time, my parents were here. Strange.

My dad has somehow developed an unhealthy obsession with lamingtons. So when we went into the city on Saturday, he immediately initiated a frantic search, stopping in every bakery we passed until he got his paws on one.

Two years, four days and four months after I arrived in this country, I finally got myself a New South Wales driver's license last week. Until my California one expires, which unfortunately happens in just a few weeks, I find myself in an ideal situation. For everyday sort of use, the NSW license will make things easier. But on the off chance that I get pulled over by a cop, I can pull out the CA license and plead ignorant.

Bit of a sports deluge the last few weeks. We got the Australian Open in full swing, Australia's playing Pakistan and the West Indies in a series of cricket matches, and I'm doing my best to stay up to date on the football playoffs. Good time of the year to be a sports fan here.

Australia Day is tomorrow. While we won't be going up to Macmasters Beach like two years ago, we'll be doing much of what we did last year at the Ascot: plenty of food, drinks, cricket (playing), cricket (watching on TV), tennis (watching on TV) and music (annual Triple J Hottest 100 countdown).

Couple of big posts planned for the next few weeks. We got a lil' something to do with Portuguese chicken and a lil' something to do with Kentucky Fried Chicken. Although chicken's involved in both, the posts promise to be very different in content.

Avatar: Surely this is all a big joke

2010-01-20T11:38:00.000+11:00

In high school, I went to the movies practically every weekend. I loved going to the movies.

In college, I went to the movies once a month, maybe once every two months. I guess I had a few more options to entertain myself. It happens as we exit our teenage years.

Since college, my movie-going has been in constant decline. And now it's gotten to the point where I might go two or three times a year. I find this sad, but only really upon reflection, because I certainly don't do anything to change it.

Avatar broke a loooonnnng movie theater-less streak for me. Before that, I'm really not sure what I'd last seen in a theater. Slumdog Millionaire? It's a distinct possibility. But with Avatar, well, all the makings were there for a mandatory visit to the movies. Based on all the reviews – from critics and friends alike – it promised to be a spectacle of grandiose proportions.

I was not disappointed. Everything I expected from Avatar, I got, and then some. It was truly a cinematic experience; no way you could get that from watching it on a TV, as I generally watch movies these days. Hell, I was so spellbound, that halfway through the movie, I realized my eyes were tearing up because I hadn't blinked in probably half an hour.

It was a great experience. And it even may have rekindled some of that love of the movie-going experience that I'd held so deeply back in high school.

But then, at least to me, a strange and perplexing and infuriating thing happened: serious accolades for Avatar began to come in. As in, 'Best Picture of the Year' accolades. This of course culminated (at least up until now) in the film winning the Golden Globe for best picture (drama) – not to mention best director – on Sunday.

Now. It's one thing for a film to be entertaining, to be visually stunning, to be revolutionary in its production. Avatar was all of these. I'd go as far as to say that that's an inarguable fact. Yet a great movie, these qualities don't necessarily make. Merely a good movie, these qualities don't necessarily make. And as much as I enjoyed Avatar, it's borderline good. That's simply what happens when you take a tired, formulaic story and combine it with some of the most hackneyed, clichéd dialogue imaginable.*

*Back in December, before the movie had been released, Joe Posnanski actually devoted an entire blog post to one line of dialogue from the trailer... a line of dialogue that we're all very familiar with. Needless to say, Posnanski wasn't impressed and wrote off the movie based on that one line.

(I'll also note that Posnanski starts that post in a very similar fashion to how I've started this one. But I'm gonna plead innocent; unless it was subconscious – and I guess I have to concede that that's a distinct possibility – it's completely coincidental.)

What's really sad to me is that we've been down this road before with James Cameron's last epic, Titanic. Visually stunning and supremely well-made? Yes. But a tired and formulaic story combined with some of the most hackneyed, clichéd dialogue imaginable? Yes, yes, yes, a thousand times, yes.

Titanic swept all the award shows. And now I fear that Avatar is going to do the same.

I don't know. Maybe it's just my interpretation of what should constitute a 'Best Picture'. All three Lord of the Rings movies were at least nominated for the Oscar for best picture (with the third installment winning), and while I only saw the first one, I thought that it too fell into the well-made/crap story bucket. (I'm assuming – although potentially very wrongly – that the last two of the trilogy were similar in style and content.) But I look at other Oscar winners from the past, and just about every one is backed by a great and compelling story. Let me repeat that, with some emphasis: a GREAT and compelling story.

In my opinion, Titanic is the rare exception to this rule. I'm guessing that LOTR III is as well. And if Avatar wins the Best Picture Oscar – currently a prohibitive favorite to do so – that'll be one more exception.

Three exceptions to a rule aren't exactly an exception anymore; they become part of the rule. But if a movie only has to be well-made to be considered great, well, then I'm not sure what we're doing anymore.

I'm not saying there isn't a place for movies like Avatar. Of course there's a place for them. There will always be a place for them, and I consider this to be a very good thing. But is one of those places the Golden Globes, or the Oscars? No. Never.

I wish the voters would come to their senses in time for this year's Oscars and deny Avatar the biggest of accolades, but I don't expect that to happen. Maybe it's all just a big joke on me.

I'm with Coco

2010-01-16T12:37:00.003+11:00

Plenty has been said this week about the Conan-Leno saga over The Tonight Show. So apart from saying that I'm firmly on Conan's side, I'm not going to add any more.

But. This video. It's simply brilliant.

Partying like it's 2008

2010-01-13T20:43:00.000+11:00

The final days of 2008 were amazing. Those final days were so amazing, in fact, that I essentially did them all over again this year, in the final days of 2009.

Some may view such repetition as a bad thing. I do not. Not when you've identified a surefire recipe for success.

Last year's Christmas was spent with a friend's family – Yogi and the Davis family – overlooking the ocean at Macmasters Beach. This year's Christmas was spent with another friend's family – Shorty and the, uhhhh, Short family – in the slightly less exotic Wagga Wagga.

After driving from Sydney to Wagga on Christmas Eve, I was awoken early the next morning by Shorty's sisters,* both of whom were eager to rip open some gifts before Christmas services.** After a brief, one-hour service – actually pretty painless, especially if you want to put it up against High Holiday services – we were back to the house for a day-long feast.

*Shorty's sisters are in their 20s. Yet to this day they still force the family up at 7 on Christmas morning to open gifts.

**Shorty's birthday quite unfortunately falls on Christmas. So not only did he grow up with the dreaded Christmas/birthday combo gifts, but he's been to Church on his birthday every single year of his life. Even the "but Andy's Jewish!" excuse this year wouldn't fly.

It's absolutely no secret that the Short family can eat. Big time. And we did so on Christmas day, by stuffing ourselves on four varieties of meat – turkey, ham, chicken, pork – and a few of your staple veggies, like potatoes and sweet potatoes and pumpkin. My. Lord.

This was of course topped off by desert, which included fruit salad, ice cream, pavlova, trifle, and the pièce de résistance (well, for me at least), plum pudding with brandy sauce. Oh. My God.

That was lunch. We did it all again for dinner. And then again for breakfast the next day.

We could have kept on feasting on the leftovers all throughout Boxing Day, but instead, it was time to cook up a whole new feast! This time it was to the barbecue, as the Shorts ticked off more types of meat that hadn't been consumed yesterday: rissoles,* sausages and steak. And what Short family barbecue could be complete without a potato bake? Oh, I think there was some salad, too. And most importantly, the plum pudding made another appearance.**

*Basically a hamburger patty, although a little thicker than what you see in the US and usually prepared with herbs and other seasoning mixed in.

**My current list of favorite Australian food that's not commonly available in the US: meat pies, sweet chili sauce, plum pudding with brandy sauce. I'm sure I'm forgetting a few more.

Throughout the day, the rest of our caravan for the trip to Melbourne and Falls converged on Wagga. And so continued the near-identical trip from last year. Again, this isn't a bad thing.

The 27th was a day of transit, from Wagga to Melbourne. We made our way down there by early evening, set up camp at Shorty's brother's apartment, and headed out for a barbecue at a friend's place and drinks. We had a big day ahead of us, so we kind of took it easy. Kind of.

The 28th was Day 3 of the Boxing Day Test match between Australia and Pakistan. First ball at 10:30. Stumps at 6. Seven and a half hours of cricket and no result (not that one was to be expected). I loved it.*

*And bucking the trend that I cited in my post from before this trip, in which I said that I was sports kryptonite for successful home teams, Australia ended up winning this Test match!

And then, it was on to Falls! Up quite early on the 29th, we caravanned it down to Lorne, got to the festival area, slowly made our way to the campsite, set up camp, and got to it.

One massively key point of difference between Falls this year and last year: the weather. Last year, it was freezing at Falls. FREEZING. And rainy. This didn't stop me from having a great time, but it really didn't help. This year? Hot and sunny! And I loved every minute of it.

I'm not sure if the music lived up to last year's, but it was still fantastic, with The Temper Trap, Art Vs Science and Major Lazer being highlights.

And on New Year's Eve, with the Hilltop Hoods on the stage at midnight – a somewhat dubious choice to bring in the New Year, in my opinion – we said goodbye to the Naughts or Naughties or Oughts or whatever the hell we're calling the decade... and then kept on going for several more hours. It was fantastic.

What wasn't fantastic, however, was New Year's Day. First, it had rained that night, and we woke up to a wet and gray morning. Everything was damp. Second, after packing up, it took us all of three and a half hours to drive out of the site. And third, later that night (and perhaps due to an ill-informed lunch of KFC; ironically, my first KFC in exactly a year), my stomach revolted.

Not a great way to start a new year, by any stretch, but the days prior were a great way to close out the preceding one. Just as they were last year.

Farewell, 2009. Helllloooooooooo 2010!

I got your New Year's Resolutions right here

2010-01-07T10:24:00.000+11:00

Recap of my Xmas/NYE trip on this here blog. Soon.*

*I will not define "soon".

Post more frequently on this here blog.

Upload photos from my last several months to this here Internet.

HAPPY 2010!

And I think it's gonna be a (good good) time

2009-12-24T11:04:00.000+11:00

To nearly quote Elton John.

Last year, in the days leading up to New Year's, I spent Boxing Day in Wagga Wagga, the next few days in Melbourne (partly to catch Day 3 of the Boxing Day Test match*), and the remaining days of 2008 at Falls Festival.

*Looking at the Wikipedia page for the Boxing Day Test match, I didn't realize that Australia had absolutely DOMINATED that match before last year: 9 wins in a row, and 14 wins (and two draws) in the last 18 years. So of course they lost last year. As soon as I enter the arena, you can always count on a dominant sports team to lose it. Just ask the French National Soccer team. Coming off a World Cup victory in 1998 and holding onto an ungodly winning streak, I went to see them play Russia in June 1999 for a qualifying match for Euro 2000. They lost. Of course.

This year, in the days leading up to New Year's, it's exactly the same: Boxing Day in Wagga, a couple of days in Melbourne for the cricket, the last few days of 2009 at Falls Festival. Only difference from last year is that my stay in Wagga will start a few days earlier, with Christmas with the Short family.

If this year is to live up to last year's trip, it has an uphill battle to fight. Last year was epic. Everything about that trip. But I'm pretty confident that this year can match it. Perhaps even exceed it? I wouldn't be surprised.

But let's not get our hopes up, at least not too much. A big week lies ahead of me. It should be good. And I just may report on it here sometime in the next few months.

Have a great Christmas (for those of that ilk) and New Year's, everyone.

The 2009 Melbourne Cup: The official, definitive and final recap

2009-12-23T20:59:00.000+11:00

So. Let's see. The Melbourne Cup was on November 3. Today is December 23.

Yes, I let some time go before writing about the trip (or, well, anything on here). That being said,* there is an upside to my indolence: by waiting so long – or I guess more aptly, by putting it off for so long – I can pretty much guarantee you that this is the absolute final recap on the 2009 running of the Melbourne Cup.

*I just slammed my way through Season 7 of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Brilliant, brilliant stuff. And we basically got an entire new episode of Seinfeld out of it! They certainly made up for the finale. Oh yes.

You see, as I first noted two years ago, this nation goes absolutely mad for the Melbourne Cup. Hugely mad. It's called "The race that stops a nation" for a reason. Literally, everything stops. Everyone gets in front of a TV. I wouldn't be surprised if the streets were completely deserted.* In Melbourne, the day is a public holiday!

*Problem is we'll never know, as there's no one there to check. It'll forever be up there with the whole "tree falling in the woods" conundrum.

Anyway. As I was saying. Everyone goes mad for the race. But the thing is, it comes out of nowhere. Seriously. A week prior to the race, most people in Australia couldn't name a single horse that might be running in it. Then, like a flash in the pan, everyone gets into it. The local and national news are covering it. It's on the front page of every sports section, if not the main section. It's the topic of discussion at every water cooler. People can recite the entire 24-horse field in alphabetical order, reverse alphabetical order, by age, by sex, by jockey, by trainer, by owner, by country of origin, you name it.

The race is run on a Tuesday.

And then it's over. The media dissects it on Tuesday night and Wednesday. Maybe you get a few remnants on Thursday. And that's it. Just as fast and unexpectedly as it came, it's gone. No more mentions. It's almost like it never happened.

Which brings us back to me! Seven weeks and a day after the race was run, here's my little recap of the race and day. And as the above paragraphs were meant to illustrate, in my very longwinded way, this surely has to be the last thing ever in the history of civilization to be written about the 2009 Melbourne Cup. I feel honored. And perhaps a little daunted by the responsibility.

So let's break this bad boy down thematic style.

The gambling

Yeah, I may have made some proclamations that I was gonna get ridiculously knowledgeable on the race, and I swear I made a few token attempts to do that. But for the most part, life kinda got in the way. So going into the race, my level of knowledge was at about 20% of what I would've liked. And that included zero knowledge on any of the races other than the big one.

I placed and lost some bets on races one through six. And the big one, Race 7? I nailed it!! Granted, I put bets on several horses, but as the race neared, I settled more and more on Shocking as my singular pick. And Shocking did it. Unfortunately, that means that the other five or six horses I had money on didn't do it, so on the day, I broke just about even.*

*This "breaking even" thing doesn't exactly count the whole day, which included an evening jaunt to the casino during which I very much did not break even. Yeeeeaaaaaaahhhhh, not even remotely close to even. Let's move on.

The spectacle

Attendance on the day was 102,000 people, which I think is the largest crowd I've ever been a part of. But because we weren't in a circular stadium in which you could see everyone else, it didn't really feel like there were 102,000 people there. Not even close, really. If I had no knowledge of the day or the race, I very well may have guessed that the attendance was something around 40,000.

Regardless of how big I perceived the crowd to be, it still felt like a huge event. There was a buzz on the train heading out to the track. Everyone was dressed up. Each woman was seemingly trying to outdo all others with her hat. The lawn for general admission was absolutely packed. The vibe, even when we arrived at 10:45, was downright giddy. And that giddyness increased even more so as the day progressed, as more alcohol was consumed, as the anticipation increased. So when it came time for the big race to start, just after 3, we were ready. We were very ready.

The race

I'd (kinda) done my reading. I'd placed my bets. I'd secured my viewing spot. And at just after 3, the 2009 Melbourne Cup started.

One thing about the Melbourne Cup. It's long. LOOOOOOOOOONG. At just a shade under two miles, it's half a mile longer than the "long" Triple Crown race, the Belmont Stakes. So even after the race starts, you need to control your emotions. Settle in. Don't get too excited. At least not too early.

What pretty much makes this impossible, however, is that the horses run by you twice: once, right after the start, and then again, as they come down the stretch. So when they flew by us that first time, we all lost it. This is what we've been waiting all day for!! WOOOOOO!!! But then they were gone. And we waited. Sure, we could see the race on the big screen, but it was pretty hard to make out who was in what place, and it was absolutely impossible to hear the call of the race, not above the noise of the crowd.

Eventually, the horses rounded the last turn towards the finish and headed back to us. And as they passed us, about 100 meters before the finish line, there was Shocking leading the way! And there went Shocking to keep the lead right to the end!!!

Everyone went wild.* Some people may have had Shocking, most probably didn't, but it didn't really matter. We'd all just watched the Melbourne Cup. And it was good.

*The "everyone" excludes Maz, who was feverishly trying to figure out if he'd hit his trifecta. It wasn't until he actually went to the betting window, presented his ticket and received several hundred dollar notes that he was convinced that he'd won.

The post race

There are 10 races on Melbourne Cup Day. And for the most part, people not only got into the big race but the preceding six races as well. The last three races, however? My lord... after the big race, it was like the Plague had descended on the track. Blink, and everyone was gone. And the seagulls swooped. Oh yes... the seagulls swooped.

After watching a race or two more and drinking some of Maz's winnings, we made haste as well, back to our hotel and then onto the casino and the city.

The next day

Noise. Yeah... noise.

LOUD NOISES!!!

This is what I awoke to the next morning. As they ripped apart the parking lot outside our hotel room. I mean that as literally as possible. The concrete that was in the parking lot the day before? It was no more. At 8 in the freaking morning. On the day after the Melbourne Freaking Cup.

So, yeah. The day didn't start out so well. And it really didn't get any better. Maz, Joanne and I wandered around the city, first on a failed attempt to go to the Coffee Bean that I'd found on a prior trip, then on a failed attempt to go to the hotel that Maz was staying in that night. But we finally got to the hotel, collapsed for an hour, and then I was off to the airport.

I was miserable. I felt disgusting. But I'd been to the Melbourne Cup. And it was good.

I hope

2009-11-11T17:34:00.002+11:00

Just because.

I hope. sound bite Morgan Freeman sound bites

I find I'm so excited I can barely sit still, or hold a thought in my head. I think it's the excitement only a free man can feel. A free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend, and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.

From the notebook: The Curse of Dingman

2009-11-05T22:10:00.002+11:00

Yeah. The Yankees won. I'm acknowledging it. Great.

Before we move on for good, I guess it would be fitting to use this space to do another "From the notebook" post and reprint an email that I sent to a group of friends on November 7, 2003, shortly after I gleefully watched Josh Beckett and the Marlins vanquish the Yankees in the World Series. (My lord... there was glee.)

Enough of the Bambino or the Billy Goat... the Curse of Dingman is the real deal! For each person you forward this onto, whether they're a Yankee hater or not, the Curse of Dingman will be extended 3 years!!

In 1993, in the 36th round of the amateur draft, the Yankees selected Craig Allen Dingman, a young right-handed hurler from Wichita, Kansas. Seven years and three Yankees World Series titles later, Dingman was given a chance to be part of the storied franchise when he was sent up to The Show. And what do you know, but a few months after that promotion, the Yanks bested the Mets, their cross-town rivals, four games to one in the Fall Classic. Dingman's stature as a good luck charm was solidified.

For whatever reason though, the Yankees didn't see the signs. Because just days before they set out to defend their title in the 2001 season, they traded Dingman to the Colorado Rockies for one Julio de Paula.

But something was afoot. Something the Yankees should have seen coming faster than a Steinbrenner rage-induced coaching staff overhaul. Because ever since that fateful move, despite making the playoffs each year and going to the Series twice, the Yankees have never again won it all.

THE CURSE OF DINGMAN LIVES!!

Apparently this email was only forwarded to three people... hence a nine-year spell in between Yankees World Series victories. And the Curse of Dingman? It no longer lives. Sigh.

You know how I enjoy throwin' some Kleinballs?

2009-11-01T23:03:00.000+11:00

I feel like there's some Andy Rooney-ness to the cadence of this post. Imagine he was reading the below to you. Perhaps you'll get more enjoyment out of it. Or not. Anyway.

You know how I said I was gonna learn everything there is to know about the Melbourne Cup? Yeeeeaaaaaahhh, it's looking like that isn't gonna happen. But I'm semi knowledgeable at the moment -- just placed my first bet, $5 on Roman Emperor -- and have some reading material for the flight down to Melbourne tomorrow.

You know how I said Pedro was gonna get torn apart by the Yankees in Game 2 of the World Series? Yeeeeaaaaaahhh, didn't quite happen. Kind of some middle ground there. Although 3 ERs in 6+ IP at Yankee Stadium... if you're a Phillies fan, I think you have to be happy with that from 2009 Pedro Martinez.

You know how I said the Angels would win the World Series? Yeeeeeaaaaaaahhhh, clearly na ga da. I just pray the Phils can pull something off here.

You know how I beat a very consistent drum about Joe Posnanski being a great freaking writer? Yeeeeeeaaaahhhh, I'm still right on that one. He's done it again, this time on Derek Jeter.

You know how it's been a 14/17 hour time difference between Sydney and the East/West Coast of the US? Yeeeeeaaaaaahhhh, just an FYI with Daylight Savings Time, now it's 16/19.

You know how I'm going to Melbourne tomorrow? Yeeeeeeeaaaaaaahhh, I should probably pack for that and then get some sleep. Good night, Planet Earth!

Is Charlie Manuel feeding Pedro to the dogs?

2009-10-29T23:02:00.001+11:00

7th inning, Game 7, 2004 ALCS, Yankee Stadium. I remember it too well. Up 8-1, the Red Sox were on the verge of completing the greatest comeback in baseball history. Yankee Stadium was silent. I was euphoric.

And then, inexplicably, improbably, incomprehensibly, Terry Francona summoned Pedro Martinez to pitch.

In 2004, Pedro was already in decline. He was still great, yes, but he was a far, far, far cry from the Pedro of years past. And in his previous two starts in that year's ALCS, he had allowed 7 runs in 12 innings.

I still don't know why Francona did it.

(Well, I think I know why he did it: Pedro needed redemption. Not just for how he had performed up to that point in that series, but for how he had performed in, ahem, a certain other Game 7. But for the game, for the team, for Red Sox Nation, it was a silly, ridiculous, absurd move.)

Visibly amped up for this appearance -- clearly too amped up, enough to lose control of his emotions -- Pedro got absolutely obliterated by the Yankees. It was like batting practice for them. And Yankee Stadium came to life. It was awful. Just a few pitches into the inning (consecutive doubles by Matsui and Williams on what I recall as one straight, lifeless fastball after another) and I was mush. This is supposed to be a moment of triumph! A moment I'll remember for the rest of my life! Why Terry, WHY??!?

Thinking about it today, it felt like Pedro allowed 20 runs that inning. In fact, he only allowed two. But the damage had been done. After systematically ripping the heart out of every Yankees fan over the last 3 games and 6 innings -- beating their team in every conceivable, cruel and crushing manner possible -- those fans had hope again. There is nothing worse than a Yankees fan with hope. Nothing. So because of that, for what he allowed to happen, to this day, part of me still hasn't let myself forgive Francona for it.

Game 2 of the World Series will be Pedro's first playoff appearance against the Yankees since that awful moment in Game 7. So I ask: Is Charlie Manuel pulling a Terry Francona? Is this a sentimental start, a chance for Pedro to finally redeem himself?

I'm sure Manuel would laugh that question off. As it should be laughed off. But does part of him think that, just a tiny, tiny bit? Well, at the very least, it's crossed his mind.

Either way, Phillies fans should just go ahead and write off Game 2. Because Yankee Stadium will be shaking. Freaking electric. And Pedro, unless he can find some zen-like way to contain his emotions, is going to try to overpower the Yankees lineup. He can't overpower the Yankees lineup.

Phillies fans: take your well-deserved win in Game 1 and be happy with it. The series will be tied at one apiece going back to Philly.

However! I will add that despite my near certainty that Game 2 will transpire like this, and despite my absolute hatred of all things Yankees, I'm still very excited for tomorrow, to see the moment Pedro steps onto the mound to start the bottom of the 1st. It will make for great, great theater.

And hey! Maybe, just maybe, Pedro will prove me wrong.*

*I pray he proves me wrong, and finally redeems himself.**

**And I think he can do it.

Jumping into the deep end

2009-10-25T21:10:00.000+11:00

For the majority of the time that I lived in New York, I worked for an advertising agency that counted two of the racetracks in New Jersey (Meadowlands Racetrack and Monmouth Park) as clients. Great clients. Some nice perks. And I worked hard for them. But one thing I never did, one thing I never fully committed myself to, was to really immerse myself in the experience and learn about the horses, the track, the place. I just worked for my clients and tried to help them bring more people to the track. And sure, when I went out to the track myself, I generally had a good time.*

*One aspect of the races that has never led to good times? The betting. I've won a few bets here and there, but I've never left a racetrack up. Never. This has haunted me nearly as much as my failure to catch a ball in the stands at a professional baseball game.

I don't know if regret is the right word, but I've always had this lingering sense of disappointment that I didn't get into the racing more. It would be interesting, right? Learn about the horses, the trainers, the owners, the jockeys. How they all have a hand in shaping the journey, how they all have so much invested in the races. There are some real stories there, which we might occasionally hear about during the Triple Crown or perhaps in a movie like Seabiscuit. Part of me always wanted to really immerse myself in that, if even for one day.

Well, that day has come. As I said in my last post, I'm going to the Melbourne Cup in just over a week. So I've committed myself to learn everything I can about the day: the race, the preceding races, the horses, everything. I'm going to walk to the track next Tuesday with some serious knowledge. Who are the favorites? What bets offer the best value? What's each horse's handicap? How have the horses fared in previous races? How have they fared in races run in similar conditions? I'm gonna know it all. I'm gonna take the Melbourne Cup by storm. And by the end of the day, I'll be making a pose similar to that guy in the photo.*

*Or more likely, not at all. My streak of leaving a racetrack down will undoubtedly continue. But at least I'll have fun. I think. Hopefully.

Throwin' some aimless Kleinballs

2009-10-14T09:37:00.000+11:00

It's strange. For me, writer's block is usually accompanied by a certain sense of complacency towards wanting to write anything, anything at all. I have nothing to write about, and I don't care to write about anything. And historically, that has generally sorted itself out; one day, the urge (and content) strikes me. So I write.

With my current bout of writer's block, however, I really do want to write. Yet I feel like I have nothing to write about. That's not to say that I have nothing going on in my life -- I'd like to think I've been keeping myself pretty busy recently -- it's just that the urge isn't striking me. Who knows.*

But I've had enough of this. I'm just gonna write. We'll see what happens. I guess it's some sort of ill-conceived, haphazard throwin' of some aimless Kleinballs. Not that they're not all like that, anyway.

*Upon rereading these last paragraphs, it occurs to me that I think I DO know what's going on: Twitter, and the Twitter-ization of Facebook. Before those two platforms, blogging was the best way for me to broadcast my thoughts, my ramblings, my HILARIOUS takes on life. But now... well, they say that Twitter is "micro blogging". For a while I didn't really grasp what that meant. But I think I do now, and they -- whoever THEY are -- are absolutely right. I have a funny thought? Twitter. I've come across a link I want to share? Twitter. I want to randomly share the opening line of All Along the Watchtower? Twitter. And then there's Facebook doing all it can to imitate Twitter's success.

Put it all together, and Twitter and Facebook are cannibalizing the content for this blog. Do I therefore need to redefine how I use this space? Maybe. And it might necessitate the cessation of the Kleinballs series. Because if anything was suited for Twitter, it's those little thoughts that don't deserve a whole blog post on their own. But let's not let this ruin the moment; for now, the Kleinballs live!

Went 3-for-4 on my picks for the divisional series of the playoffs. And glad that the one series I was wrong on was the Dodgers! Although I'm still really wary of that starting pitching. Looks like the offense is getting it together, but you can only put so much trust in a rotation of two incredibly inconsistent, young guys and two old farts that are using smoke and mirrors.

For those of you out there who like your statistics represented visually, Information Is Beautiful is a great blog that I've been reading for the last few weeks. Especially like the visualizations for caffeine and calories, the death of the music industry, the walled world, time travel in popular film and TV (takes a few minutes to wrap your head around that one, but well worth the effort) and how safe is the HPV vaccine. The guy who does the blog also has a book out now... I'd get it but for the fact that I don't have a nice coffee table to let it collect dust on.

You may remember my posts about the Melbourne Cup the last two years. And while I still haven't grasped why this race holds so much cultural significance, I've stopped trying to figure it out and have just accepted it as fact. It's really a HUGE day -- think the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont all rolled into one -- and in no place more so than Melbourne, where it's actually a public holiday. So this year I've decided to go! I fly down on Monday morning, go to the race on Tuesday, then fly back on Wednesday. I'm pumped. Much more to follow, I'm (kinda) sure.

The Socceroos -- that would be the nickname for the Australian national soccer team, of course -- played the Netherlands in Sydney on Saturday to a nil-nil draw. It wasn't a very exciting match.

That is all.

The drunken Miggy Cabrera baseball playoff preview

2009-10-08T22:16:00.000+11:00

Two years ago, I brought you The pom-pom baseball playoff preview. Last year came The John Higgins baseball playoff preview. So this year? Well, you didn't ask for it, but you got it: the return of the baseball playoff preview!

The inspiration for this year's preview goes to a player whose team didn't even make the playoffs. The Tigers did come tantalizingly close to doing so but ultimately choked away a division lead and lost out in a one-game tie-breaker -- a game that looked like it may have been one for the ages* -- to the Twins on Tuesday.

*For all the baseball watching I've been doing on the Internet the last few years, this may have been my best experience yet, the one that felt the most visceral. I really felt like I could get into this game, that I could imagine the moment, the crowd, the tension. MLB.com's Gameday is pretty freaking good, and its latest integration with a Twitter feed, which allows you to track people's reactions right next to a pitch-by-pitch account of the game, makes it all the better.

Miguel Cabrera, you're an idiot. You get paid $14 freaking million dollars a year, yet you feel so little responsibility towards your team, your owner and your fans, that you don't care about playing at full capacity? After a big night of drinking, I can hardly walk, yet you go out knowing that you're gonna have to hit a 95 mph fastball the next day? That's a joke. A joke! I don't get it. You have practically half a year worth of the offseason to drink to your heart's delight, yet in the middle of a pennant race, as your team's division lead is dwindling away, you're getting so drunk -- not to mention with members of a rival team! -- that your GM has to act as your babysitter and pick you up from the police station at 7:30 in the morning?

And I don't even care about the drama that resulted from the drinking, the shady bickering with the wife; that's another issue that needs to be dealt with separately. It's the fact that you went out at all... just absurdly dumb, arrogant and irresponsible.

Oh. And then there's your responsibility to me. That's right. ME. I had you on my fantasy baseball team, and coming down the stretch this year, when I needed you most, here are your stats for the last week of the season: .158 avg, 1 run, 0 home runs, 0 RBIs, 0 stolen bases. Faaaaaaaaantastic.

Okay. Phew! Rant over. And with that pleasantness out of the way, let's get to it.

Minnesota Twins
I like this team. Not just the 2009 Twins, but the Twins franchise in general. And I'm pretty sure I'm not alone here. Just something so likable about them. Especially because they seemingly persevere every year without the resources of the big market teams. In the last six years -- just because that's how far I cared to look back, but I'm sure the same would hold true if I looked further -- here's how their payroll has ranked against all 30 MLB teams: 19, 20, 19, 18, 25 and 24. Here's how their record for each of those years has ranked in the league: 6, 11, 3, 17, 10 and 11. For those keeping track at home, the average of their record versus the league is ten places higher than their salary versus the league. That's good.

Colorado Rockies
Yawn. They were hot going into the playoffs in 2007, and I correctly picked them to go to the World Series. They're hot again this year going into the playoffs, but, well, they just don't seem to have that je ne sais quoi. Really, nothing they do is above average; it's all relatively solid. A recipe for postseason success this does not make. Pass.

Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
Let's make a pact to not make fun of their name anymore, okay? The whole "Los Angeles Angels of California in Orange County of Anaheim off the 405" thing has gotten old. And you know what else has gotten old? It really pains me to say this, but I think it's the Angels' futility against the Red Sox in the postseason. This is the year the Angels get by the Sox. Maybe Mike Scioscia* will finally overcome whatever makes him cower in the presence of the Sox. Maybe the Angels will release a real, rabid, rally monkey into the Sox' dressing room. Maybe the Ghost of Nick Adenhart will strike. Or maybe the Sox will simply come undone. (More on this later.) I'm not sure exactly what it'll be, but I just have a feeling that it's gonna happen.

*Yes! Didn't need to look up how to spell his name!

St. Louis Cardinals
This is a good team. A frightening team. You know how I said the Rockies don't do anything really well? These guys do a lot of it well. Really well.

New York Yankees
It was nice not having them around last year, right? Oh well... guess it would've been a bit nuts to think we could make it two years in a row. But I'm happy to report that they're not going to the World Series. To the ALCS, yeah, probably. But that pitching... I'm not convinced. I could easily see CC throwing a stinker or two, AJ will throw multiple stinkers and Pettitte's 85 years old. Glad we can dismiss them!

Philadelphia Phillies
The defending champs! My God, I was so happy to see them win last year. One of the highlights of the year for me. I walked around with a grin on my face for the rest of the day, not at all for me, but for the people of Philly. That was awesome. But this year? I'd like to feel good about them -- really, I would -- but that bullpen... yeesh. Sorry Philly, but you can only cash in on so much karma at a time, and that was well and truly done last year. There's none left. That's kinda what happens when you boo Santa Claus, throw batteries at opposing players and cheer when they suffer near-fatal injuries.

Los Angeles Dodgers & Boston Red Sox
Like last year, I'm grouping them. I'm know. It's gutless. But I can't separate them. I won't separate them. Still, I'm comforted this year by a simple fact that didn't hold as true last year: both of these teams are flawed. Deeply flawed.

The Dodgers have holes everywhere. They also have holes nowhere. If the Rockies are your prototypical solid team without any flash, the Dodgers are your definition of schizophrenia.* The question is, which team shows up? The one with perhaps the deepest lineup in the NL? The one with two starting pitchers who can match up with those on the Cardinals and Phillies? Or will Manny continue his space cadet ways? And will the inexperience and inconsistency of the Buzzsaw and Kershaw shine through?

*Yes! Absolutely had to look up how to spell that!

The Red Sox are -- sigh -- the Yankees of the last few years. Their roster is seemingly full of immobile 1B/3B/DH types. They're old. They lack the passion of previous Sox teams from this decade.* So I just can't get excited about their prospects for this year. Next year? The year after that? All the way through the teens? In Theo and Co, I absolutely trust. But this year? In the immortal words of Dana Carvey impersonating George H.W. Bush, a na ga da.

*I want to be perfectly clear that I'm talking about this Sox TEAM, not the organization. Yeah, the Sox franchise may be more similar to the Evil Empire than any other franchise, but they're still different enough. As in the Yankees' payroll is $80 million dollars higher (over 50% higher!!) than that of the Sox. As in Theo could outwit Cashman any day of the week. As in John Henry is actually sane.

Wow. Going into this, I really didn't have much of a sense of who I thought would win each round, and I wasn't even sure I wanted to make any picks. But I think I just worked myself towards some clarity, and I'm happy to make them official. To recap, I guess: Yankees over Twins, Angels over Red Sox, Cardinals over Dodgers, Phillies over Rockies. Angels over Yankees, Cardinals over Phillies. Angels over Cardinals.

So! There we are. Another baseball postseason staring us down. I'm excited. Who knows how many games I'll get to watch, but I'll savor every opportunity I get. And hopefully next year -- just maybe! -- Miggy will lay off the booze. He has all this postseason and several months afterwards to drink himself silly.

Orange Sydney

2009-09-23T22:42:00.000+10:00

I woke up this morning to the sound of the wind rattling my windows. Sounds about right, I thought. We're supposed to have some heavy wind today. Then I opened my eyes. And everything was orange. Deep, dark, saturated orange. Riiiiiiiggggghhhhht...

I opened the sliding door to my balcony. Felt warm and there wasn't a smell, so I figured it was just some heavy fog, with the rising sun behind it adding some drama to the colors.

I went for a run in Centennial Park. There was hardly anyone out there. Usually the park is teeming with people exercising in the morning. But with the orange color slowly graying, I stuck by my fog hypothesis and thought little of it.

Got back to the apartment and turned on the lights. Normally a yellowish color, my sight had been so distorted by the orange that they appeared to be blue.

It wasn't until I turned on the TV that I realized, no, it wasn't fog. It was a huge frickin' dust storm. A huge frickin' dust storm that was covering half the state! So during that run, I probably managed to inhale a few pounds of the stuff. Fun!

I had a morning meeting in the city. On the bus coming in, pedestrians were walking around with makeshift masks over their mouths. And when I made it to the meeting, on the 47th floor of a building that usually offers amazing views of the city and harbour, there was nothing to see.

Spending a day in that stuff, after starting it with a run, I'm feeling it now. Itchy throat. Slight trouble breathing. A bit of cottonmouth.

Of all the videos and photo montages that I've already seen, I think this is the best.

It was a strange day. A strange, orange day that I won't be forgetting anytime soon.

Two years

2009-09-14T21:36:00.000+10:00

Two years ago on this day, I landed in Sydney and began this adventure. No job. No place to live. No clue as to how any of this would play out. Just a dude, a vague sense of direction and a couple of bags. Two years ago on this day. TWO YEARS!

Three houses, two jobs, 12 roommates, nine AK All Day Faces,* three toilet flushing experiments, 16 Kleinballs and several Portuguese chicken-related incidents later, here I am.

*If only I ever get around to posting ALL the AK All Day Faces I have stored away on my computer...

I don't even know what else to say about that. Has the time flown by? Yes. Do I feel like I've made the most of my time? Yes.

Do I know what the next year has in store? No. Not at all. But I guess that's a good thing.

A shocking sports weekend of epic proportions

2009-08-27T21:57:00.002+10:00

I find that my weekends are often defined by sports. This happened in college, this happened in New York and it's happening in Sydney. And while sports can fill a weekend with glee, it can also cast doom on our days of rest.

This past weekend, a huge shadow of sports doom descended upon Australia.

The first blow was the Bledisoe Cup match between the Wallabies and All Blacks on Saturday night. The Wallabies are Australia's rugby team. The All Blacks are New Zealand's rugby team. And amongst the many rivalries between those two countries -- sports or otherwise -- this one takes the cake. New Zealand may be a bit more rugby-mad than Australia, but Australia still loves it plenty. Imagine USA-Canada in ice hockey... except pretend that the US still actually cared about ice hockey, just a little. It would be kinda like that.

Anyway, I was fortunate enough to score some tickets to the match. So out to the Olympic Stadium I went, looking forward not only to what is generally a great match, but also to New Zealand doing the haka, a Maori dance that was traditionally performed before a battle in the hopes of scaring the bejesus out of the enemy.

Based on the premise of this post, you already know this ended poorly for Australia: All Blacks 19, Wallabies 18. And even though it was close, with New Zealand taking the lead for good in the last few minutes, it was actually pretty non-eventful.* I mean, relatively speaking. If I was expecting a 9, I got a 7. So, you know, I was let down a bit.

*In rugby union, teams will often score many of their points off of penalties. And that's pretty much what happened here. 30 of the 37 points in the match were scored off of penalty kicks. Imagine an NBA game in which 81% of the points were scored off of free throws, and that's what you have here.

Even the haka wasn't great. If you scroll ahead to the 5:10 mark of this video, you can see it. But in my mind, the gold standard for the haka came in last year's Rugby League World Cup, when New Zealand and Australia faced off in the final:

Now that's a haka.

The second calamity of the weekend actually didn't come until late Sunday night, when Australia officially lost the Ashes, one of cricket's most celebrated rivalries, to England.

Australia dominated the tournament from 1989 to 2003, winning every single time. And even after losing the Ashes in 2005, they promptly won them back in 2007. So going into this year's contest as the #1 ranked team in the world, it was widely expected that they'd win again. After four test matches, the series was tied at one apiece (with the other two being draws). Starting the fifth and final test match, everyone thought Australia had the momentum. They didn't. And late Sunday night in Australia, England won back the Ashes. Which would be that tiny little urn that Ricky Ponting, Australia's captain, is holding in the picture. Yeah. That's what they play for.

And the final sports catastrophe of the weekend? Let's go back to New Zealand and my ice hockey comment. For in a match that I'm sure no one even knew was happening, New Zealand took out Australia for the first time ever in ice hockey. Is that really necessary, after a weekend that will live in infamy? I think not.

65:53

2009-08-17T22:13:00.002+10:00

Yeah.

For the Bridge Run, I grossly underestimated how fast I could do it. But for City2Surf, I thought I had a much better handle on things. So that apprehension about breaking 70 minutes... that was real. Apparently not?

Maybe it was the adrenalin that comes with running with 75,000 people. Maybe it was the fact that I really, really, really had to urinate for all 65 minutes and 53 seconds. Maybe it was the fact that I just wanted the damned thing to be over with already. Whatever it was, I got under 70 minutes. Easily. And now I'm left to wonder if I could break 65 minutes... and I think I can. Guess we'll have to wait for next year.

Until then? I think it's back to the Bridge Run in September, and my newest goal: breaking 40 minutes.

And now we play the waiting game

2009-08-10T22:10:00.001+10:00

Yesterday was great.

The previous night's sleep, during which I seemingly woke up every half hour? Not so much. The 6:45am wake up call? No way. Standing idly around before the race for an hour, in the chilly morning air, waiting to start? Ummmmm, no. Realizing about 20 minutes before the race that I really had to piss, except that there was no way I had enough time to wade through a sea of people to the toilets and back? Absolutely not.

But from the atmosphere in the crowd at the starting line, to the moment the starting gun went off, to a band proclaiming "Freak you, I won't do what you tell me!" on top of the Golden Sheaf, to running along the harbour in Rose Bay, to the excruciating climb up Heartbreak Hill, to the 4km descent to Bondi Beach, to sprinting through to the finish line... well, I actually had fun.*

*That fun continued post race,** as a group of us headed to a bar and downed several drinks that (a) went down FAR too easily and (b) went to my head FAR too quickly.

**The fun ceased shortly after the bar, as Yogi and I walked the three kilometers -- all uphill -- from Bondi Beach to Bondi Junction. With 75,000 racers (plus plenty more supporters and onlookers) descending upon the area, all traffic had come to a standstill, and all buses were absolutely packed. So we walked. And no, that was not fun.

Post-race walk aside, the exception to my fun during the race may have been my need to urinate. For throughout the entire 14 kilometers, I had to go, bad. Real bad. Did that help me run faster? It actually may have. The problem is, I don't know exactly what my time was. At least not quite yet. You see, I finished 1 hour and 24 minutes after the starting gun went off, but I didn't actually start until well after then. And the official results aren't released until tomorrow.

I'm pretty confident I did sub-70 minutes, which would quite please me. Did I reach 65? I think that's a stretch... but I think there's a chance. I'll find out for sure soon enough.

Can I break the 70 minute barrier?

2009-08-08T18:30:00.000+10:00

In my last post on the City2Surf race, I boldly targeted a time of 65 minutes, thinking that 70 was well within reach. Well, in case you're hearing some beeping right now, that's the sound of me backing off of that proclamation. For after a few runs in the past several days that I've kinda timed, I've realized that 65 minutes is a bit of a pipe dream, and even 70 may be pushing it.

In preparation for tomorrow, I've been doing some runs home from work, which you can see here: over the Harbour Bridge and by the Opera House, through the city and Hyde Park, into Surry Hills and then a long last straightaway by Moore Park, past the Sydney Football Stadium and the Sydney Cricket Ground. Not a bad route for the scenery, and at just about 10km with a few good hills, I think my conditioning is there. The speed? That's another question.

I'm pumped for tomorrow, although I'm not entirely sure what to expect. But if nothing else, it should be fun.

I've had nightmares tamer than this

2009-08-05T21:46:00.001+10:00

I think that my fear of large, flightless birds has been well documented on this blog. First was my trip to Mission Beach, during which I was convinced that it was only a matter of time before a cassowary hunted me down and had its way with me. Then was Hannah's wedding, where I had to sleep no more than 100 feet away from some looming ostriches.

So imagine my sheer horror when, as I walked through Auckland Museum last month, I saw this:

That, my friends, would be a Moa. Indigenous to New Zealand and reaching heights of TWELVE FEET (and over 500 pounds!!), it's the tallest bird ever to be recorded. Thankfully -- well, thankfully for me, not so much them -- they've been extinct for over 500 years.

So there I was, craning my neck up at this beast. Sure, it was behind glass. Sure, it was stuffed. But still. My LORD. The fear lives strong within me.

You can almost spell "fun" with "run"... but you see, not completely

2009-07-28T21:19:00.000+10:00

It all started about this time last year. Maybe a bit earlier.

First the seed was planted in my head. It began to percolate. The intrigue built. And only after I had fully sold myself on the idea of running in Sydney's City2Surf, I finally realized that I'd be out of town when it was being held. As a consolation prize, you may remember, I did the Bridge Run in September.

This year, however, I'm there. The weekend is clear, August 9 is circled on my calendar and I'm fully prepared to run this bad boy.

What is City2Surf? It's a 14 kilometer "fun run" -- as if calling it that actually makes running 14 kilometers (and change) any less excruciating than we all know that it will be -- which starts in the center of Sydney and ends at Bondi Beach. Some people take it seriously, others use it as an excuse for a nice stroll, others get dressed up in costumes.* (I guess that's the "fun" part?) Either way, everyone suffers through Heartbreak Hill, a two kilometer, steep ascent about halfway through the course.**

*Last year, a guy dressed as Superman sprinted out at the start of the race and ended up pacing the field for the first few kilometers.

**I've DRIVEN this hill and been exhausted by the time I've made it to the top. You go up, up, up, think you're there, turn a corner, and then there's another freaking hill staring you in the face. It's evil.

Here's a nice video from the organizers:

No, it's no marathon, let alone a triathlon; I'll let the crazies have their fun doing those. Instead, this is merely a distance that will test me without killing me.

So! I have 12 more days until the race, and with the Blue Mountains and Auckland well and truly in the rear view mirror, I've started to get serious with some training and have slowly been increasing my running distances. Went for a lovely 13.5km run on Saturday that damn near killed me. So that's fun.

The goal for a time? 65 minutes. I'd be happy with anything under 70 -- that's five minutes per kilometer on the nose -- but why not push myself? If I could do the Bridge Run last year in 42 minutes, and that's about 4:40 per kilometer, well, with an extra 5km of maintaining the same speed and that beast of a hill thrown in, it's gonna be close.

More to come in the days leading up to the race, and some sort of post mortem afterwards.

Viewing Auckland from volcanoes

2009-07-26T12:29:00.002+10:00

As touched on in my post from Auckland, the city sits on a volcanic field, with around 50 of them spread across the metropolitan area. While it strikes me as a bit nutty to build a city on a volcanic field that will erupt again, it's undeniable that these volcanoes allow for some great vantage points.

My first full day in the city, walking along the waterfront, I stuck my head into the office for a ferry company that runs boats to Rangitoto Island, the city's youngest and largest volcano. I just wanted to get some info on possibly going out the next day, but when the woman told me that that was the last day they'd be running boats to the island for the next ten days, and the last boat was leaving in ten minutes, I said to myself Screw it, let's do it! and jumped aboard.

A 20 minute ferry ride and one hour hike later, I stood at the top of the island.

Quite the view, although unfortunately not the greatest of days to be up there. What was fortunate, however, was the weather on my next day, when I visited Mount Eden. Sharing its name with the surrounding suburb, this volcano is much closer to downtown and is the highest point on Auckland's mainland.

A quick, 20 minute hike up the hill provided for a really great view.

Hope this has been educational! If nothing else, I've learned that I should probably start using different intros for each of my videos. We'll see what I can come up with next time.

Been doing... stuff

2009-07-21T21:52:00.000+10:00

Had a lovely day of travel on Thursday, coming back from Auckland. Got up at 3:30am Auckland time. Sydney's two hours later, so that's 1:30am. Got to the airport by 5am. Left Auckland at 7am. Landed at 8:45am Sydney time. Made it through customs without incident, meaning my visa woes are behind me, at least for the time being. Brief stop at the apartment and then off to work. Left work around 7pm. Came home, had dinner, went to bed around 10:30pm. That's a fun 23 hour day!

And since then? Haven't been up to too much... little of this, little of that. Easy night at the apartment on Friday. Went a little wild for a friend's show on Saturday. Spent Sunday with some family friends at the Aroma Festival in The Rocks. Watched the finale of MasterChef Australia, which had absolutely taken the country by storm. And then work this week.

I have stuff -- actual, substantial stuff -- that I want to post on here. Just haven't gotten around to doing it yet. Not with all this other stuff that I've been doing. Hopefully soon.

Enjoying an extended stay

2009-07-14T15:42:00.000+10:00

I should be back in Sydney right now. I'm not. Still in Auckland.

My new visa, for which I had to apply while out of the country and wait for its approval before reentering, was not processed in the 48 hours that I was told is generally required. So no return trip on Sunday.

Fortunately, approval came yesterday (Monday) and now I'm completely legit! I head back on Thursday.

The extended stay in Auckland, however, isn't exactly the worst thing in the world. In fact, you could say that I'm enjoying it. Just a little more time to explore what I've found to be a pretty good city. Hey, even the Wallpaper guide book is treating me well!

Did you know that Auckland sits on a volcanic field? They say it's dormant for now, but it's only a matter of time for a new volcano to erupt. As in, it will happen. Isn't that crazy? I mean, they should have plenty of warning for the next eruption, but I'm not entirely sure why anyone would want to set up shop here for any extended period of time. Anyway, I've climbed up a few of the volcanoes here, which offer some great views.

Made some great discoveries for food and drink, as well. The Northern Steamship Co, right near the city's waterfront, is awesome. They only serve Mac's (a great line of local beers), offer a really good menu and have a nice, warm decor.

And there's randomly a large amount of Mexican restaurants! This has me absolutely baffled. You see, Mexican food in Australia is next to nonexistent. And for those establishments that do serve it, it's generally crap. But here... I actually went into a place with real Mexicans. REAL MEXICANS!!

And although I haven't been to any fast food restaurants, I've been pleasantly surprised to see a Wendy's, Denny's and Dunkin' Donuts. As far as I know, none of those places exist in Australia. Even Burger King is called Burger King!*

*For those who don't know, Burger King in Australia is called Hungry Jack's. (If you care at all, this Wikipedia entry explains why.) Since New Zealand is linked to Australia in so many ways -- think Canada to the US -- I assumed it would be the same here. Nope.

Weather has been on and off. The first two days were quite nice. Sunny. The weekend was a bit miserable. Lots of rain. Yesterday was gorgeous. A bit cool, but clear, blue skies. Today isn't so nice. Rainy and much colder.

But I'm still enjoying it. Nice to get away and do something different. So I'm trying to make the most of it, because this Thursday, I'm back at it.

A quick breather before Auckland

2009-07-07T06:56:00.000+10:00

Got back from a great weekend in the Blue Mountains Sunday night, which went pretty much as expected: good company, good scenery, good food, good pseudo Fourth of July celebration.* We didn't even have to leave the cabin until late in the afternoon, which made for a true, full weekend.**

*In fact, when it came to preparations for the Fourth, and after all my hand-wringing over what to do to commemorate the day, I was out-Americanized by some of my friends, who brought sparklers, American candy (Reese's Pieces and Tootsie Rolls) and photos of Americana to hang on the walls. Me? I brought up a case of Bud and my Mom's recipe for apple pie. Never ended up actually making the pie, though.

**Always hated how you have to check out of a hotel at 10am on a Sunday. I mean, Sunday IS part of the weekend, right? And in many circles, it's commonly known as God's day of rest, right??!? Yet they essentially cut the day out of the weekend and disturb our rest by forcing us out of bed at freaking 10 in the morning!!!

Went to work yesterday and am off to the airport in 35 minutes to spend the rest of the week in Auckland!

What am I doing in Auckland?? Yeah, besides settling all my visa issues, I still don't really know. Would love to just get out and about and explore, maybe take a day trip or two out of the city, but it's supposed to rain for most of the next few days, which generally makes said exploration not so fun. But I'm not exactly in New Zealand too often, so I guess I kinda have to do it, regardless of how wet or cold it is.

May try to do a post or two on here while I'm over there, but we'll see. When it comes to traveling and blogging, I don't have the best track record.

Pondering the Fourth in the (red, white and) Blue Mountains

2009-07-02T22:07:00.003+10:00

What is the Fourth of July?

Originally this post was gonna be mostly about my upcoming trip this weekend, with a little side note about how the Fourth coincides with it. Then I started to think about the Fourth, really think about what it means. At first I didn't have much of a sense for that, or how I felt about the day. But after maybe six or seven iterations of this post, I think I'm somewhere. Have a read and then let me know in the comments: do you agree?

So. What is the Fourth of July?

We all know why the day holds such historical significance, and that's certainly a large part in what makes it so special; however, I'd argue that what really makes the Fourth so special, what really makes it stand apart from other holidays, is its cultural significance. It's a day when the nation collectively comes together, puts all our worries behind us and celebrates.

The Fourth of July's of my youth were 5km runs in the morning, a barbecue and parade in the day and fireworks at night. For each of these events, large groups of people converged to celebrate and be part of the spectacle.

The Fourth of July's of my early adulthood were more of the same, minus those pesky 5km morning runs. And again, for each of those events, large groups of people converged to celebrate and be part of the spectacle.

Then I came to Australia. And that has provided me with some perspective that I'd otherwise never have had.

For the Fourth last year, by random coincidence, I ended up at a house party thrown by an American. But we were the only two Americans there; for everyone else, it was just another house party. So not surprisingly, it felt nothing like a Fourth in the US.

For the Fourth this year, the happenstance continues, as it turns out that a group of my friends and I -- nine total -- will be spending a long weekend in the Blue Mountains, a national park a couple hours west of Sydney. We'll be renting this cabin and filling our days with, ummmmmm... well, I'm not sure what we'll be doing. I'm guessing it'll involve taking it rather easy, eating a lot, going for some hikes and maybe even indulging in a few adult beverages.

Clearly, plans for the weekend aren't too rigid; we'll just figure things out as we go. The exception to this laissez-faire approach, however, has to do with commemorating the Fourth. Because some time in the last few weeks, everyone got it into their heads that since there'd be an American on this weekend, we had to do something for the Fourth, some sort of traditional thing, for lack of a better term. And they all looked to me (understandably enough, I guess) for inspiration.

I had no immediate inspiration. So I started to think about it. And the more and more thinking I did, the more and more I came to the above conclusions, at least subconsciously: the Fourth of July is the summation of many parts, which, when all mashed together, creates a day ensconced in festivity. There isn't any one thing that makes the Fourth the Fourth, nor can you magically conjure up the feeling of the Fourth. Instead, it's the barbecues, the fireworks, the parades, the friends, the family, the laughing, the green grass, the blue sky, the pomp, the circumstance. You need all of that, every last bit, or it just doesn't work.

Of course there's no way I'm bottling all of that up and bringing it to the Blue Mountains this weekend. Although maybe I could still get away with doing just one or two things? But even some of the more tangible stuff, like a barbecue or fireworks, would be tough to pull off because of practicalities like the forecasted weather (a high of 46 Fahrenheit does not make for a fun barbecue) and our environment (Smokey the Bear has taught me that it generally isn't a good idea to play with fireworks in a forested area).

SO WHAT TO DO??!? Maybe just something that's stereotypically American, like making an apple pie, or buying some Budweiser, or singing the Star Spangled Banner? I don't know, none of that really feels right. I'd still be missing the pomp! Not to mention the circumstance! But seeing as no one else will know (or demand) any better, I guess any or all of those options would fly.

I have another 13 hours to figure it out. Maybe I'll come up with something good. Maybe I'll take an easy way out and cook up some hot dogs in the kitchen. Or maybe I'll do nothing at all. We'll see. Regardless, I'm absolutely looking forward to doing a few of the things that many of you in the US will also be doing this weekend: getting away from it all, taking it easy and spending time with friends. It's not a true Fourth, but it'll do.

Have a happy Fourth, everyone.

Auckland can't come soon enough!

2009-06-30T16:57:00.000+10:00

The trip to Auckland is now just seven days away, and fortunately for me, it really couldn't come at a better time. You see, it turns out that the lovely folks at the Department of Immigration aren't done giving me the run around, and I kinda sorta need to vacate the country for a bit.

It started a few weeks ago. I received a letter from Immigration that stated that my sponsored visa -- the one that I was on with my previous employer -- was about to expire. "Not a problem," I thought. "I already sorted that out in April when I went to the US and reentered the country on a tourist visa. They must have sent this by accident."

Yeeeeaaaahhh, it was no accident. Two Fridays ago, I got a call from a woman at Immigration, who was clearly miffed that I had not heeded her letter and was still in the country. I protested: "But I switched to a tourist visa in April!" Sadly, she clarified, based on a technicality that I won't explain here (and that no one had bothered to explain to me!), I wasn't on the tourist visa for which I had applied, for which I had been granted approval, and for which the Australian government had happily taken my application fee.

"Balderdash!," I thought.* "What shall I do now?" I complained. I started to get a little short. And then paranoia crept over me as I began to picture the Australian Federal Police closing in on my position, Minority Report-style. Were they using this phone call to triangulate my location???

*No, that word didn't actually go through my head. I can't remember my exact thoughts in the moment, although I'm guessing they were more of the obscene variety. But I like that word: balderdash. Good word. Underrated. I don't think I'm using it correctly, but whatever, it sounds like a good, non-offensive expletive. So to very roughly paraphrase U2,** it's a word that obscurity -- or perhaps just good sense? -- stole from society, and I'm stealing it back!

**Coming on the heels of my last post, guess I'm really into "very roughly paraphrasing" these days. And is that redundant, to "roughly paraphrase" someone?

A minute or two into moaning and griping, I realized there was a relatively easy solution at hand: I was shortly going to Auckland! Why not use that opportunity to get off this cursed sponsored visa once and for all and reenter the country on a Work and Holiday Visa, which means (as the name might suggest) that I can actually work? I presented this solution to the woman, and she seemed happy with it. Done and done!

So! Come next Tuesday, armed with the Wallpaper City Guide Auckland,* I fly out and spend five days in and around the city.

*I won't bore you with another entire post on guide books -- and anyway, I have neither the time nor the inclination -- but as you may recall, I also opted for a Wallpaper guide book for my trip to Melbourne last year. I decided to go with it again for this trip, although after looking back at my own thoughts on the Melbourne book, I'm beginning to wonder why in the wide world of sports I went with it for this trip too. Besides the fact that the book is pretty, I found it to be useless! Limited information... inadequate maps... food and entertainment options that are completely out of my price range... you name it. Yet I was suckered into buying it again!! Ahhhh, the beauty and temptation of a well-packaged product.

Don't have much idea what I'll be doing quite yet -- I'm hoping (pretty please?) that Wallpaper will help me out there, although I'm also staying with a distant relative who can point me in the right direction -- but for the sake of my legal status in Australia, this trip couldn't come soon enough.

A postmortem on Movember... in June

2009-06-27T15:35:00.000+10:00

Yes, I realize that this upcoming November is closer than last November, when I paticipated in Movember. And I realize that the video below was made over three months ago, in March. Needless to say, we move slowly here. But I just came across this video again and, well, I love it.

I love the music, as does every other Andy in the world. I love the progression of pictures showing my moustache grow (at a painfully slow rate).* I love the Goulet picture(s). And I love, love, love Keith Hernandez smoking in the dugout.

*As an added bonus, I don't think my hair looks the same in any picture.

So without further ado! From the man who so gloriously recapped a fantastic New York weekend in a 6:38 video, from the man who will soon unleash an absolutely epic video of his visit to Sydney on the world(maybe?), and from the man who is long overdue to update his blog, I give you Andy and the Molestache:

Getting back on that Twitter horse

2009-06-25T12:43:00.001+10:00

Maybe it's because I've been living, breathing, reading and writing anything and everything to do with marketing over the last few weeks. Maybe it's because after a break of a month or so, I was ready to give it another go. Maybe it's because you can't go longer than three minutes these days without being exposed to it. Maybe it's because I finally realized that it might actually be in my best interest to be shackled to the confines of 140 characters.

In the end, I can't directly place my finger on the 'why'. Why's the sky blue? But to very roughly paraphrase Scott Storch: I took roughly a month off, and now I'm back up in the Twitter.

(There's no good place for this tangent, so I'll just do it here: There are some awful, awful, awful comics about Twitter floating around the Internet. I searched for a good 20 minutes before settling on the one in this post, and even then, I'm including it somewhat reluctantly. I actually seriously considered using a comic that was in Spanish, just because, well, I guess I could pretend that it was funny. Maybe I shouldn't have included a comic at all? I don't know. Maybe. I just felt like I needed something else in here besides 400 words about how I'm getting back on that Twitter horse.)

In my first go with Twitter, I got it, I think. At least for the most part. This time, I really think I get it, maybe a little more. I'm not sure I know what that means. I certainly don't expect you to know what that means. But, yeah, I think I get it. So I'm getting back up on that horse, and am tweeting like a mad man. Caught up in my new-found zeal, I've ditched the bug-ridden MadTwitter desktop application and have supplanted it with TweetDeck, which may ultimately send me into sensory overload and turn my brain to mush,* what with its grouping and search capabilities (not to even mention the synchronization with Facebook).

*Kinda like what's happened with my Google Reader account. Haven't been under "1000+ new items" in months. And the longer I let that go, the more daunting and demoralizing it becomes.

So! In case you don't already, feel free to follow me. Or just view the updates in my little widget on the right sidebar here. Let's see where this takes us.

Late on the Lake Show, and a remembrance

2009-06-23T12:43:00.001+10:00

Woooooo!!! WOOOOOOOOO!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! LAAAAKKEEEEEEEEERRRRRSSSSSS!!!

Oh, wait. That's right: the Lakers won the NBA Finals a week ago. A week ago! And I'm just getting around to it now. Dammit.

I wish I could say that witnessing Laker victory from 7,500 miles away is just as sweet as experiencing it a bit closer to home, even from the East Coast of the US (as I did in 2000 and 2001). But it isn't. Not even close. I mean, which scenario would you choose:

(A) Watching the game in a crowded bar with dozens of rabid fans.

(B) Following the first half of the game at work via nba.com and Lakers Nation's Twitter feed (which was superb, fortunately) and then watching the second half in a quiet pub in Sydney at 11am on a Monday.

This isn't a trick question; it's an easy answer. But unfortunately, I don't have a choice in the matter. I had to take Option B. Although I guess I can't complain. Coming here, I knew I'd be making some sacrifices -- just as I knew I'd be getting a whole lot of benefits in return -- and I guess this is one of them.

I wasn't nearly as close or as emotionally invested in this Lakers team as I was in the 2000 or 2001 Lakers. Those teams... those were the championship teams that I loved the most.

Ironically, a year after those two titles, while I was on my first trip to Sydney, the Lakers won another one. And to make that championship even sweeter, they beat the hated Kings in a brutal seven-game Western Conference Finals on the way to their three-peat. Yet just like the 2009 Lakers, I didn't have nearly the same connection to that team.

Whatever. It's still awesome. I'll take it.

You know what I really miss, possibly more so than the thrill that would have come from being closer to this victory? Chick Hearn.

This is the Lakers' first championship since Chick died, just a few months after they swept the Nets in 2002. And seven years later, I can still remember coming off the plane from Australia that August, stepping onto US soil for the first time in half a year, and being greeted by my Dad, who almost immediately told me of Chick's passing.

I miss everything about Chick. His sing-song voice. His sayings. The excitement he brought to the game. His thinly-veiled loathing of Stu Lantz.* His connection to the Lakers, and to the city of LA.

*I have no proof of that, but I swear you could tell he didn't like Lantz, and I'll go to the grave believing it.

I can still close my eyes and picture Chick calling games, hear his voice. We'll never have another one like him, just like we'll never have another Vin Scully. So as the Lakers wrapped up Game 5 in Orlando last week, that was one of the first things that came to mind. Because as great as it was to see them notch up their 15th NBA title, it would have been so much more sweet to hear Chick calling it.

I'll let Chick close it out for us:

Thank you, Steve Nootenboom

2009-06-17T01:55:00.000+10:00

A week and a half since my last teaser of a post re the job. Hmm. Didn't mean to go so long to follow up. Well. Let's do that. The job.

As you're all steadfastly loyal readers of this blog (surely!), you know all about my travails of the past several months: Lost my job. Couldn't find new job. Found pseudo job. Almost lost all hope. And now, I've got a real job! One that pays!!

To fully appreciate how we got here -- well, more just to appreciate the title of this post -- let's go back to September 1995. Yeah -- nearly 14 years ago. My freshman high school class had a retreat to some camp a few hours outside of LA. To be honest, I can't even remember where it was. Big Bear? Lake Arrowhead? Maybe one of those. But what I do remember, what left an indelible impression on my young mind, was that Steve Nootenboom came to speak to our class.

Nootenboom was a motivational speaker, and he fit the Matt Foley-esque mold* of motivational speakers in every way possible: He was exuberant. He was passionate. He was verbose, going on (and on and on) much longer than any of us (teachers included) cared for. He desperately wanted to connect with us. And connect with us he did, probably more so than he could ever realize. In fact, he said one thing in particular that, for whatever reason, has always stuck with me: If you want to get a job, if you want to break into a new field, if you want to try something different, you have to offer to work for free.

*Actually, that's not a bad comparison. Because when I think of Nootenboom after all these years, I think of a skinny version of Chris Farley's Matt Foley. Honestly. Yeah, I'll allow for the very real possibility that time has completely warped the image of him in my head. But let's go with that image.

Accepting the "offer" for the pseudo job the other month, this very thought crossed my mind. I can't say it's why I took the job, but maybe a week or two into it, the connection occurred to me. And I thought just how ironic it would be if I actually got a job out of working for free.

Working with FG, one of the clients for LV (the website development firm I've been working for),* I formed a rapport with the head guy. And in a meeting a few weeks ago, he casually mentioned that he was looking for someone to head up the marketing efforts for the new site we were putting together. It sounded interesting and something that I could be good at, so I offered up my services. He responded enthusiastically, and we scheduled an interview.

*For the sake of retaining my anonymity on the World Wide Internets -- and I have a variety of reasons for doing so at this stage -- I'm not gonna refer to these businesses by their full name. The client will be FG. The website development firm will be LV. These are actual acronyms.

Since last October, I've been on more interviews than I care to recall. Some were awkward, some were intense, some were friendly, but all were relatively formal. My interview with FG was over dim sum.* My future boss and I talked. Some of the discussion touched on my past experiences, some of it touched on ideas I had for the company, a lot of it was just pleasant chit chat. We had some good food. I tried chicken feet for the first time, which were really good, although with so many bones, quite a chore to eat.

*Called "yum cha" in Australia. No idea why there are different names. If someone wants to look it up, please feel free to let me know.

Lunch ended with a job offer: Spend the next several weeks developing and starting to implement a marketing plan for the company's new online business, and see where we go from there.

After all the uncertainty, after all the stress, that's all it took. I'm still shocked by how quickly and simply it all went down. So one more time, I say to Steve Nootenboom: thank you!

Throwin' some quick toss Kleinballs

2009-06-06T03:09:00.001+10:00

The original idea behind the Kleinballs was to give you some quick, punchy thoughts on a variety of disparate topics. Me being me, of course, I've recently gotten a bit verbose with some of them. Not today, however, because I gots things going on! And I need to get some of them off my chest.

A FREAKING JOB!!! ONE THAT FREAKING PAYS!!! I GOTS ME ONE OF THEM!!!!

I ate chicken feet on Tuesday. A laborious chore to consume, with bones everywhere, but well worth the effort. Surprisingly moist and tender.

It's been comfortably over a decade now, but his words have always lived with me. And now they've paid off. So to Steve Nootenboom, I say THANK YOU.

Amazingly, the three above items are all connected. Some of you may be able to find the link between two of them. But how are all three intertwined? I'll fill in the blanks, and give more info on this job (that pays!), next week.

Current Lakers score: 88-60, with 9:15 to go. My lord, if they win the finals, that would be the ultimate icing on a week that's already been stupendous. (Oh, wait, I forgot: the NBA Finals go on for three months. Never mind.)

Needing to renew by visa but not knowing my future job situation, I booked a one-way ticket to Auckland the other week, for July 7. And now that I have a job (that pays!), I'm gonna make it a quick trip, and have booked a return flight for July 12. No idea what I'll be doing there yet. Maybe this will bring another venture into the wide world of travel books? I'll let you know when I know.

Congrats to Randy Johnson on win number 300. Now, to all those who think that we'll never again see a pitcher make it to that milestone: J-Poz has his rebuttal, and as always, it makes far too much sense.

The reason for my rushed post today? We gots a threeeeeeeee-daaaaayyyyy weeeeeeekennnnnddd coming up for the Queen's birthday! (Although it's not really her birthday at all. For all the basics, see my reading notes from last year.) A group of us are off to Hawks Nest, about three hours north of Sydney. Should be a nice, long weekend of doing nothing at all. Can't wait.

Next week: a job (that pays!).

2009 Fumblers B Decathlon: Sunday

2009-05-29T02:29:00.000+10:00

This was one of those mornings. Your head is pounding. Your stomach is turning. You're struck by a bout of dizziness as you step out of bed. You only remember little windows into last night; details are hazy, if not nonexistent. Clothes are strewn across the floor. Your wallet is nowhere to be found.* You find your friend's credit card in your pocket.** Your phone isn't working.***

*Honors for this went to Short. Hysterically, his phone alarm went off shortly after we woke up with the reminder, "Find your bloody wallet!"

**I reached into my pocket to find Leif's credit card. When I returned it to him, neither of us could remember why I would have had it.

***Short pulled this feat as well. Hey, did I previously mention that he blew a 0.312 BAC? I believe there may be a correlation between that and the havoc he brought upon himself.

Why did any of this happen? Ummmmm, I don't know? How about: Why do I drink, ever? Is it worth it? Should I ever drink again?

Yeah. This was one of those mornings.

Slowly -- painfully slowly -- we all congregated in one of the living rooms to debrief each other on the night's events. Gradually we began to connect the dots here and there. And, well, yeeeeaaahhhhh... I think a lot of us would've been happy for those dots to never be connected again. We did some stupid things.

Before getting to the last event, we revealed the results of the Treasure Hunt, which had been going on in the background throughout the entire weekend. Unfortunately for me, one of the other guys had found my cricket ball, which I had hidden in what I thought was a very safe location outside of the apartment. I hadn't found anyone else's balls (hmmmm, that sounds wrong), so I received zero points in the event. Fortunately, I had company, as four other people were also sans balls. (Still sounds wrong.)

With only one event to go, we did a quick subtotal so everyone knew what was at stake prior to receiving our last points. And it turned out that we had a race on both ends of the spectrum! Short had the lead, with 72 points, but Joe and his 62.5 points had a shot at overtaking him. (My 58 points, good for fifth place, put me just outside of contention.) And although Lam had a pathetic 31 points, there were three others who still had a mathematical shot to overtake (undertake?) him for last place. This was going to be exciting.

Event #10: Fumblers Lotto

What better way to end the Decathlon and decide our winner and loser than with a complete game of chance?

We all placed our cricket balls in a box. First ball pulled would receive one point, second would receive two points, yada, yada, yada. Last ball pulled would win the event and receive 12 points.

The first ball pulled that would impact first or last place was Short, at three points. However, his 9.5 point lead over Joe was so commanding that three points were just enough to clinch victory. And Joe wouldn't even make it a close finish, as his ball was next out, giving him only one more point than Shorty in the event.

As for those in contention of finishing in last, well, there were unfortunately no changes in the standings. Maz was very vocally dreading the possibility, and for a moment, it looked like it might happen, but it wasn't meant to be.

And with that, we were done! The Second Annual Fumblers B Decathlon had been completed.

In first place, with an impressive 75 points,* was Mr. Pete Short. His award? The very trophy, in all its random and lame glory, that he himself had selected earlier in the week! He immediately expressed regret for purchasing that trophy -- how's that for karma? -- although he gratefully posed for the picture to the left.

*Not sure why I think that that's impressive... this was the first time we've actually staged a ten-stage decathlon with 12 contestants. For example, the winner of our nine-stage decathlon last year, with 15 contestants, received 88 points. Was that impressive? I don't know.**

**How about this: Short scored 75 points out of a maximum 120 points possible. That's 62.5%. Last year's winner scored 88 out of a maximum 135 points possible. That's 65.2%. So maybe Short's score wasn't impressive? Maybe no one cares? Maybe I should stop talking?

Congratulations Pete Short, on a job... done.

And in last place, with a pathetic 38 points,* was Mr. Daniel Lam! His punishment? Scull a beer from our cricket trophy -- the very one to which I'd done an unspeakable thing only weeks earlier!** Look at him savor every drip of that beer.*** Yum!

*Maybe I'm not sure about calling Shorty's 75 points impressive, but I'm absolutely confident in assessing 38 points as pathetic. Seriously. That's really bad. 3.8 points per event??!? Come on.

**It should be noted that a few days after all of this, back in Sydney, Short and I revealed to the group that I had NOT, in fact, done the unspeakable thing that we had claimed. I guess I'll just share it with you: here's a link to the video.

Imagine watching that only up to the 1:08 mark, because that's all that we showed the guys before the weekend was over. And under the assumption that THAT'S what I had done, Lam had drunken out of the cup.

***Note that because of the cup's current state, broken in several places, Lam actually drank out of a hole on the bottom. Hey, sometimes you gotta improvise.

And how did I do? Well, thanks to a dominant showing in the Fumblers Lotto, I leapfrogged much of the competition and finished with 69 points... good for second place! That's quite the improvement over last year's sixth-place finish, so I was somewhat pleased with the result. But first place would've been great.

Wanna see the entire scorecard? Look no further than right here. Everything you could want to know about how anyone did in any of the events at your fingertips.

Without a doubt, the Decathlon was an unequivocal success. We were happy. But still hungover. The only prescription? HARRY'S!!!

Capping off the weekend at Harry's, we had our last, unforeseen adventure, which involved some chauvinism, a bit of racism and plenty of bewilderment. It's been over two weeks, and I still can't wrap my head completely around what happened. And even if I could, I'm fairly positive I couldn't adequately capture the moment, in all its absurdity, in words. So I'm not even gonna try to recap it here. Sorry.

We ate our pies -- Pie #4 for me was the chicken pie shown here -- and we departed Newcastle.

It was a great weekend. The Decathlon was an unequivocal success. It absolutely went to 11.

Throwin' some suspense-filled Kleinballs

2009-05-23T04:45:00.000+10:00

I know you're just dying to get that last post on the Decathlon, to hear how it ended, right? It's been eating you up for the last few days, right? You've been compulsively checking for a new post every other hour, right?

Well, you're gonna have to wait until next week! MWAH-HA-HAAAAAA!!!

I moved to Australia just as the first season of Mad Men was going to air. And ever since then, I've been hearing nonstop from people in the US about how great -- how freaking amazing, how mind-blowing, how extraordinary, how G-R-E-A-T -- that show is. So imagine my delight when I found out the other month that it was coming to TV here. Finally I get to see what all the fuss is about! But six episodes in, well, I have to say that I'm having trouble getting into it. I really, really, really want to get into it, and I'm giving it every chance, even as my other friends are giving up on it. But it isn't hooking me; so far, I'd give the show a B-, at best. Someone please give me a reason to hang on.

If you had to sum up the vastness of our universe -- that concept and feeling that Contact captured so well -- in just a few pictures, I'd argue that this does the trick as well as anything I've ever seen. Just have a look. It will blow your mind. (Just be sure to enlarge the picture once it loads up on your screen.)

I love this picture:

I haven't linked to a Posnanski post in a while, so here you go. This is quintessential Posnanski: Quite skeptical that I'd have any interest in the piece as I started -- because honestly, who cares about some NASCAR writer from Charlotte? -- somewhere about halfway or two-thirds of the way through, I lost myself in it, as it really struck a chord. If I should ever repeatedly treat anyone as poorly as this guy treated Posnanski -- and I sincerely hope that never happens, but if it does -- then I can only wish that that person could still see past that, for who I really was, and write an obituary as sincere and heartfelt as this one.

In the words of a man who needs one-tenth the amount of words to convey the same thing as me, Kill the weekend. All of you.

2009 Fumblers B Decathlon: Saturday

2009-05-21T00:01:00.000+10:00

I woke up on Saturday feeling as good as could possibly be expected. Hungover? Sure. But functional? Yeah, pretty much. And that's all I could wish for.

We all slowly got up, and miraculously, for a group that's notoriously slow at mobilizing, we were on our way by 10:30. This would be a big day, with most of the Decathlon's events taking place. So let's get to it!!

Event #3: Test Match Pokies

A holdover from last year, this is pretty much a game of luck. Put a dollar in a pokie (for the uninitiated, basically a slot machine), set the spins to one cent each, and hold down the spin button. First person to $2 receives top score, second person gets next highest, and so on. On the other side, first person to $0 receives lowest score, second person gets next lowest, and so on.

The first person to make it to one of these extremes did it at the high end, with $2. (As Shorty so simply put it: It takes at least 100 spins to get to $0. To get to $2, all it takes is one spin.) Then, the bleeding began, with one person after another bottoming out at $0.

I managed to tread water for a bit after this, and was actually the last person standing, thus earning 9 points. I think it's quite telling that of the 11 of us competing in this event, only two made it to $2. Everyone else lost their dollar.

Event #4: Mini Golf

Another holdover from last year, and it worked pretty much as you'd guess -- points awarded based on final scores.

The highlights here were our copious attempts to psych each other out and our quickly-established rule that you had to play the ball wherever it lied. And we took that rule as literally as possible, as several people managed to hit the ball off the course. This included my horribly errant first and second shots on the 13th hole that I somehow salvaged with miraculous third shot. Look at this beauty:

Don't bother asking how my ball got there in the first place. Just know that I finished with five for the hole. And a 44 for the course, which was good for 8 points in the event. (First place, by the way? That would be Joe, who did it in 32 strokes. That's 1.78 strokes per hole!!)

Event #5: RSLten30

Yet another holdover from last year. Back we went to the RSL, which features all sorts of gambling options, from pokies to keno to sports betting to electronic blackjack. The goal here is simple: over the course of 30 minutes, gamble $10 however you'd like. That could be 1000 one-cent spins on the pokies, that could be ten $1 keno bets, that could be a single $10 bet on some greyhounds.

I made a beeline for the electronic blackjack. It's what I played last year, it's what I'm comfortable with, it's what I know. I sat down, started playing $1 hands, and started winning. One simple hot streak later and I had myself over $60.

A final amount of $63.50 won me the event. Easily. In fact, the combined total of everyone else's money at the end of the event was $62.45. I beat the entire rest of group! Not only good times, not only a win in the event, but that's a cool profit of $53.50. First income I've had in over three months!

Event #6: Fumblers All-Rounder

A completely new event this year, and one that was pretty much entirely about cricket. This is a cricket trip after all, so we figured that it would only make sense to actually incorporate some, you know, cricket.

This was an obstacle course, with each person getting fully padded up in cricket gear and navigating the course as quickly as possible. Fastest time, including some deductions that could be achieved on the course, would win the event. The course went as follows:
Spin around ten times.
Do three runs.
Bowl three balls at a target, with each hit of the target earning you a five second deduction.
Crawl under some rope.
Hit a ball as far as possible, with time deductions awarded based on distance hit.
Throw a ball at a wicket from no closer than five meters.
Time stops when wicket is hit.
This event turned out to be a highlight. And in case my description above doesn't make any sense, here's a video of Shorty taking on the course:

Including time deductions, the winning time was 52.1 seconds. I finished in 1:38.1, which was good for six points. Not great, but I'll take it.

At this point, we took a break, went back to our rooms, reenergized, and met an hour or two later for the award presentations and some more events before heading out for the night.

Event #7: Scarf & Scull

Adding a new twist to our sculling event from last year, the task for this event was simple: scull a beer and eat a Harry's meat pie as quickly as possible, in whatever order you prefer. Fastest time wins.

Going into the Decathlon, I knew this would be one of my weaker events. I came in dead last in the sculling event last year, finishing a single beer in a pathetic 40 seconds,* and over the last few years, I've become a pretty slow eater. A good combination for this event, that does not make.

*However, let it be known that had I not been taunted during last year's sculling event, which at multiple times forced me to laugh, I would have finished a good ten seconds faster. Which, ummmm, still would have placed me in last place. Anyway.

We drew our names out of a hat to determine order, and I unluckily came out first. So after some mental preparation time, I stood over the beer and pie. And the clock began.

Total time, sans glorious belch? 1:44.4. The bar had been set. I knew many would beat it. The real question was, how many wouldn't?

(And let the record show that that was Harry's Pie #2 for the weekend. Your basic beef pie.)

Shorty, he of the four second scull last year, took down the event this year in an impressive 47.9 seconds.

However, no one provided more theatrics than Lam, who caught us all off guard with his hysterically unorthodox approach.

In the end, I did better than expected, with three people taking longer than me! So I finished with four points on the event, which I was more than happy to take.

Event #8: Snellfinger

A classic from last year, this event again didn't disappoint. And like my blog post last year, I'm not even gonna try to explain this game. It's impossible to do so in words. But it's very easy to pick up, and once you get the hang of it, it's insanely fun and addictive.

I won this event and netted myself another cool 12 points. Things were looking up for ol' AK!

And with that, we were ready to head out for the night! We had a few more beers, killed a bottle of bourbon and departed the apartments to take on the last event of the day.

Event #9: BAC & Yak

What's more fun than being able to quantify exactly how drunk you are, right? Juvenile? Yes. Hilarious? YES.

We'd been drinking a lot by the time we made it to this event. And it absolutely showed in our scores, as we put those from last year to shame. First place? Shorty, with a 0.312!! Last year's winning score was a 0.253, and besides Shorty, two other people from this year topped it! I wasn't one of them, but ended up blowing a 0.205 -- nearly 50% higher than the 0.140 that I blew last year.

It should be noted that my 0.205 was good for seven points... which was exactly how many points I got in this event last year! Yup, this year, we were all 50% drunker.

Throughout the BAC & Yak, a few bouncers began to congregate around us, as they quickly understood that we may have had a bit too much to drink. And as soon as we were done with the event, they politely suggested that maybe we should leave. Which we were more than happy to do; our day's work for the Decathlon was done!

We headed to a different bar, which was actually the one that I was not-so-kindly thrown out of last November. I've held a grudge to this day, so when I was thrown out again this time -- although no physical abuse on this occasion -- I was more than happy to leave. That's when I ran into Shorty, who had also been asked to vacate the premises, and who was very clearly showing the effects of his 0.312. (For the record, here's a nice little chart of what you can expect to feel at different BACs. We ticked most of these boxes. Although for Shorty and his level in the 0.30-0.39 range, I guess not the "death possible" one.)

You know what comes next, right? Yup -- Harry's! That would be Pie #3, and this time, a Tiger Pie: a beef pie with mashed potato, mashed peas and gravy. My lord.

Everything else is a blur. We ran into a few more people. Shorty realized that he had lost his wallet. We eventually headed back to the apartments. And oh yeah, and we got some more chips on the way back.

Fantastic day. Everything went off without a hitch. Heck, I even viewed being thrown out of that last bar as a good thing! So I went to sleep content, ready to wrap it all up in the morning and crown a new winner of the Decathlon.

2009 Fumblers B Decathlon: Friday

2009-05-16T06:39:00.000+10:00

Picking up where we left off, by Thursday night, planning was all in order for the Second Annual Fumblers B Decathlon. And early Friday afternoon, with a back seat fully stocked with cases of beer, Shorty and I left Sydney so that we could get up to Newcastle ahead of everyone else and take care of some preparations. We arrived around 4pm and checked into our two apartments. Like last year, they were amazing. And freaking HUGE.

For ten guys, we had two completely new apartments (the building just opened last month!), five rooms and five bathrooms. And to me, that latter point is the most impressive, because really, when you have ten guys in one place, having a ratio of one bathroom for every two guys is never a bad thing.

We got a DVD player from the front desk. We stocked the fridge with beer. We set up our two trophies: one for the cricket title* and one for the winner of the Decathlon.** And we waited for everyone else to arrive.

*Formally known as the Arthur Picking Cup, we had a bit of a mishap with the trophy on Thursday night. You see, many people have drunken from that cup. We all did it after our grand final. I'm assuming that prior teams have done the same. The problem, however, is that the cup clearly wasn't made for such a purpose. Because every time we poured beer into the cup, half of it would leak out the bottom.

Anyway, as I picked up the cup on Thursday night to set it by the front door of our apartment, it completely fell apart. The faux-wooden base, exhausted after being soaked with liquids for lord-knows-how-many-years, simply gave way and dropped to the ground. The cup itself split into two pieces. So it wasn't in the best of shape over the weekend, and it's still something we sorta kinda definitely need to address before we return it next year.

**The trophy, as you'll see in the below video, features some sort of a dancer holding out a top hat. Why? Well, it's funny. And makes no sense. No other reason. In fact, when Shorty went to the trophy store to purchase something for the winner, he went with no clear idea of what he wanted. The only criterion he had to meet was that it had to be random. SUPREMELY random. He did well. Although -- and I don't want to give too much away here -- he actually ended up doing TOO well.

A quick video tour of one of the apartments:

Over the next few hours, as we watched a rugby league test match between Australia and New Zealand, the rest of the group trickled in. And once we were all present, we sat everyone down, turned on the DVD player, and set the scene for the Decathlon with a video depicting myself doing some, ahem, unsavory "things" to the trophy on a drunken night a few weeks earlier. I don't want to get into specifics here, but let's just say that after seeing what I'd done, you wouldn't want to touch the trophy ever again. Or, say, drink from it. Which conveniently brings us to the punishment for the loser of the Decathlon! For on Sunday morning, the loser would have to scull a beer from the trophy. It wouldn't be pleasant, but I guess that's the point.

Finally, Shorty, Maz and I ran through the ten events from the Decathlon and explained the scoring: with up to 12 people competing, top score in each event would receive 12 points, bottom score would receive 1 point. There were some exceptions and other vagaries to be addressed, but that's the basic idea.

And then we headed off for our first night out and to begin accumulating our points! First up, the two weekend-long events: Treasure Hunt and Picking Up.

Event #1: Treasure Hunt

A new event to the Decathlon! For this, each member of the team received a cricket ball on which we wrote our name. And for the course of the weekend, it was our obligation to (a) protect our ball and (b) steal other people's balls. You didn't have to carry it on yourself the entire time -- in fact, that wouldn't have been a smart idea -- but if hidden, it had to be accessible within five minutes of the apartments.

At the end of the weekend you would receive three points if you still had your ball and one point each for anyone else's ball that you had.

Not much else to add at the moment, as we wouldn't know how everyone fared in this event until Sunday morning.

Event #2: Picking Up

This event didn't go so well. Not for me. Not for anyone, actually. Pretty sad.

We had a whole scoring system set up for different, ummmm, achievements accomplished, and a wingman system for the guys with girlfriends, but there's really no point in me breaking that all down. I'm just gonna let the scorecard -- I'll link to it in my last post on the Decathlon -- do the talking.

And as far as the Decathlon goes, that was it for the night. We actually returned to Fanny's, the same bar that we went to on Friday night last year, and it proved to be pretty much exactly as we remembered it. With one exception being that thanks to a new law here, every hour after midnight, we couldn't order alcohol from the bar for a ten minute window. Although based on my memory (or lack thereof) on the night, we were able to comfortably compensate for that during the other 50 minutes of each hour.

Making the trek back to the apartments later that night, I made my first trip to Harry's for the weekend, for Pie #1. This time around, it was a curry pie. As awesome as ever!! However, not being fully sated as I walked home, I stopped off at some random shop and got some piping hot chips with sweet chili sauce. Soooooooo good. Almost as good as ten minutes later, as my head hit my pillow and I entered a deep, dark slumber. There would be serious business to take care of tomorrow.

2009 Fumblers B Decathlon: It goes to 11!

2009-05-15T05:35:00.000+10:00

Last year, we held the inaugural Fumblers B Decathlon during our end of season cricket trip. And going into that weekend, I was cautiously optimistic that we'd pull it off. We had our ten events -- some of which we put some real thought into, others which we seemingly tossed in to get to ten -- but I was far from convinced that it would be a success.

Apart from our failure to actually stage all ten events, however, last year's Decathlon met and exceeded all of my wildest expectations. If I was expecting a weekend that would register an 8 out of 10, that weekend was a 10 out of 10. It... was... awesome.

So for this year, the bar had been set. And it had been set high. No longer did we view the Decathlon as a few incidental activities during our end of season trip; this time around, it felt as though our end of season trip merely acted as a stage for the Decathlon. So yeah, expectations were fairly lofty, and we knew that we had our work cut out for us.

Several days removed from the Second Annual Fumblers B Decathlon, I can confidently say that we not only staged a weekend on par with last year's, but it actually was better than last year's. That's right: this weekend went to 11.

Planning started early this year. Maybe a month or so before the actual trip, Shorty, Maz and I revisited last year's competition, discussed what had and hadn't worked, and after some debate, we settled on our ten events. Some were carried over from last year with no changes. Some were modifications from last year. And some were new events altogether.

By the Thursday night before the trip, we had everything in order: manuals for the Decathlon (five pages long!), scorecards, a trophy for the winner, a punishment for the loser, and a couple of surprises. It was going to be good.

It was good. And I'll recap everything in this space over the next week.

Throwin' some internet-less Kleinballs

2009-05-06T06:49:00.000+10:00

A tangent:*

I love the US. I'd count the ways here, but that would become quite the tangent off of this tangent. So for purposes of the point I'm going to make, suffice it to say that I love the US.

I love other countries as well. I love Australia. I love France. I love Israel. I've generally loved most countries that I've visited.

I love each of the above countries, and more, because they all have something unique to offer, something that you won't find anywhere else in the world. None of them are better than any of the others. They're all just different. This is a good thing.

As we all know, America doesn't exactly have the best standing in the international community at the moment. And while I'm merely one American living abroad who alone can't do much to change that, I'm cognizant of the fact that people may see me as an extension of my country, and therefore (generally) try to act appropriately. With this in mind, I try to avoid comparisons that favor the US, because I feel as though these may come across the wrong way, as if I'm perpetuating the arrogant, "ugly American" persona and can't appreciate what other cultures have to offer.

But then there's customer service in Australia versus in the US. I'm sorry. I've reached a tipping point and I just can't bite my tongue any longer. My lord. I know it's en vogue to complain about customer service no matter where you are -- and that includes in the US, where I've had many horrific customer service experiences -- but believe me when I say that customer service in the US is leaps and bounds better than in Australia. Let me repeat that, in caps: LEAPS AND BOUNDS.

My latest pain? The internet service provider that we use in my apartment. Let's skip over the fact that there's actually a limit on the data that we can download each month; that alone can get me going on another tangent off of this tangent. Instead, let's focus on what's happened now that my roommates and I have decided to upgrade our plan, from 10GB of data a month to 30GB. Because in order to do that, for some reason I still can't fully grasp or care to even try to explain here, our ISP has to shut down our internet for two weeks! Caps, again: THEY'VE SHUT IT DOWN! FOR TWO WEEKS!

For customers who are requesting an upgrade to their existing service, you'd think most companies would jump through hoop after hoop to provide the best service possible. Not these guys. Instead, to thank us for being loyal and giving us more business, we have the distinct pleasure of going without internet for two weeks.

*Not sure how I can start a post with a tangent -- seems to kinda counter the definition of a tangent -- but there you go. Anyway. Tangent over.

The whole point of the above was to provide an excuse for not posting recently. Sorry. You'll get over it. Until then, here are a few Kleinballs to keep you coming back for more.

ANZAC Day was last Saturday, and it was good. Went to The Local, a new pub in our neighborhood that specializes in microbreweries, and played some Two-up.* Won more bets than I lost! Had some really good beers, including a Sunshine Coast Dunkelweizen (a dark wheat beer) and a Holgate Temptress Choc Porter, both of which blew my mind. The dunkelweizen, because it's friggin' amazing. (I've recently been into wheat beers, and this was a nice twist that brought things to a new level for me.) And the porter, because, holy jebus, that thing tasted like a chocolate milkshake.

*Don't know what Two-up is? It's really simple: Everyone stands around a ring and places money on the outcome of some coins that will soon be flipped. So if you want to bet $10 on heads coming up, you hold up $10 and yell out, "Ten on heads!" If someone wants $10 on tails, they'll let you know and give you $10. (The person betting on heads always holds the money.) Then coins are flipped. If they come up heads, you keep the money. If it's tails, you fork it back over to the other person.

The game was popularized among Australian soldiers during World War I, and as ANZAC Day is a commemoration for the soldiers, it's one of two days each year during which Two-up is legal.

The "job" is going well. Haven't made, or come close, to a sale yet, but I feel like I'm providing some good value to the company. Not that "providing value" pays me anything. But still. I feel good about it. And who knows, if I'm good enough, maybe this little arrangement will change so that I get an actual salary!

Because I have this "job", which may result in some income, I'm extending my deadline to find a job -- no quotes on this one... I'm talking the real deal! -- until some later date that I haven't yet determined but should probably figure out soon. Maybe two weeks later? May 22? That sounds about right. We'll see.

When these offers become available, I think I'll just keep throwing them up here to encourage people to come visit: $640 round trip from LA to Sydney! $840 from New York!!! Honestly, people. That's just a stupid deal.

And this weekend is the end of season cricket trip to Newcastle! I'm ridiculously excited, for about 38 different reasons. Seriously, it's going to be epic. I'd say about 30 hours of planning has already gone into it. I'd share some details now but, well, there are quite a few surprises planned and I can't have anyone find out before the trip. But rest assured, a full recap will follow... whenever we get our damn internet back.

Fumblers B – SMCA Division 6 Premiers!

2009-04-28T05:33:00.002+10:00

Let's take a break from all the uncertainty surrounding that whole "job" thing to report some happy news. For two Saturdays ago, the Fumblers B -- my friends' recreational cricket team for whom I occasionally play -- won the grand final in their division! As 12th man,* I admittedly had very little to do with it, but it was still a great achievement and something that we're all quite proud of.

*For those who don't know what 12th man is: There are 11 people on a cricket team. However, when fielding, teams are allowed one substitute. That's the 12th man. There were already 11 guys more deserving than I to play on the core squad, but still wanting to contribute in some way possible, I volunteered to be 12th man.

I won't bore you with the specifics of the match. But we won, quite easily. Absurdly easily. In fact, after taking about three or four wickets in the first half hour of the match, it was all but over. We ultimately bowled them out for 122 runs, and once we put up 33 runs in the first three overs, well, the writing was on the wall.

Say hello to your Sydney Morning Cricket Association Division 6 premiers!

And here I am, treating the trophy as if it were the Stanley Cup or some other precious item whose existence I was actually aware of more than three hours earlier.

Close-ups of the trophy:

To think: we'll now forever be immortalized next to the likes of esteemed teams such as Taxation C, Electricity B, Water Board B, Taxation D* and, of course, "No competition."**

*Taxation D would always live in the shadow of Taxation C.

**As you can see from the second picture above, "No competition" reigned supreme for a cool 31 out of 40 years in one stretch, from 1967-72 and 1981-2007. We're talking Wooden-era UCLA Bruins here, folks.

And the press coverage! We garnered some serious ink in the Sydney Morning Herald, with this mention right above their prestigious croquet coverage.

Although I guess it would've kinda sorta been nice if they had actually spelled our team name correctly...

Check out a full album of pictures here.

It was a good day, one that I won't forget anytime soon. But our cricket festivities are far from over! Get ready, folks, because the Fumblers B Newy Decathlon is making its triumphant return, from May 7 to 9. Brace yourselves.

I have a job?

2009-04-25T06:17:00.000+10:00

As I said a couple of posts ago, in my search for a job, I'd leave no stone unturned. Well, it looks like that may have paid off, in the most unlikely of ways. Kind of.

Via the online Penn alumni directory, I got in touch with a guy who runs a digital agency that develops fully integrated website solutions for businesses. What does that mean? Think of everything that goes into a website. Not just what consumers see, which any agency and their mother can design these days, but all the stuff you don't see, the unglamorous, technical stuff to which many give lip service but few deliver: capturing data, generating traffic, tracking consumers' interactions with the site, building customer and prospect databases, etc. This guy's company does it all.

I thought I was going in for a simple informational interview. I left with a job... in the loosest sense of the word.

You see, this guy needs someone to generate new business. And based on our 90-minute meeting, he came to the conclusion that I could help him do that. How? I don't know; there's still a ton I need to learn about the agency's resources and capabilities. And, oh yeah, I've never actually been in sales before. So there's that.

There's got to be a catch, right? Yeah, there is: there's no base salary. That's right! At least to start, payment for this job is 100% based on commission. Now granted, I only would need to bring in four or five customers to this agency each year to be making good money. But when you're asking a new customer -- in this economy, no less -- to invest something in the six-figure range for a new/updated website, generating even that much business is a pretty big ask. So that's a bit shitty.

Why do it then? Because it's completely non-committal, with zero risk. I'll be committed to making this "job" work, yes. I'll have to take some time to try to learn the ropes, yes. And I'll definitely be trying to make some sales, yes. But at the same time, I have complete freedom to continue to search for work. In fact, that was the owner's selling point: You're currently searching for work at home. Why don't you start to do that from my office, and at the same time, I'll show you what we do here. If you like it and make some sales, great. If you don't, or you find something else you'd rather do, you're free to move on. What's the downside for me in that pitch??? I thought about it for a day, and I couldn't think of one.

When contemplating jobs I'd like to do, something like this would be far from the top of the list. But this is a no-lose situation? I try something new and see if I like it. If I do, great! And if I don't, I lose nothing. I start on Monday. And who knows? Maybe this will be the start of something new and great.

My life: The (relatively near) future

2009-04-23T13:22:00.001+10:00

My life seems to be at a bit of a nexus right now. Just finished a whirlwind of a trip to LA; now I'm back in Sydney; and then... well, I don't know what happens then. I used the first post to tackle the (very immediate) past. Then I looked at the present. So now, it's the (relatively near) future... not that even I know what it holds for me.

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The future. Right.

Here's the easy answer: A job is offered to me by May 8. I accept said job. My new employer sponsors my work visa. I stay in Australia.

Hooray! Done and done.

So can we move on now? Perhaps to a topic more pleasant?

Ahhhhhhhhh, crap. Fine. Let's consider the other road that I could go down, the one that I wish I didn't have to entertain. But I guess that this is life, and I guess we have to consider all possibilities, even those that are unpleasant.

So let's break it down.

On the off chance that I don't find a job by May 8,* the next phase in what apparently has become my vagabond life begins. Australia begins to end. Some traveling commences. Australia ends. And then the real traveling begins.

*Not sure why I'm referring to this possibility as an "off" chance. If anything, it's the odds-on favorite scenario.

Here's the thing: For the past year or so, it's been my intention to do some traveling before ultimately moving back to the US. And as this has percolated in the back of my head, I'd assumed that this would be at the time of my choosing, perhaps not for a few more years. It seems, however, that my hand might be forced, and that "time of my choosing" may be now. But be that as it may, I'm still determined to travel. So that's what I'd do.

First would be the rest of Australia. For while I've seen a fair amount of this country -- the entire east coast, in fact -- this is a massive land mass. So there's still much to see: Western Australia (specifically Perth), the Northern Territory (specifically Darwin), Uluru (aka Ayers Rock), Tasmania and maybe another place or two.

Then it's on to the big trip: South America. There, the (very, very, very tentative) plan is to fly to one of the cities in the south -- either Buenos Aires or Santiago -- spend a month picking up some Spanish, and then slowly work my way north, into Central America and back to the US. And when I say "slowly", I really mean that; this would be a full-on adventure, with no more than a rough itinerary and no pressure to move any faster than I want to.

And then, once back in the US? Well, I have zero idea. In fact, I don't even know where I'd live! But that would be a long, long time from now, and remember, this is a very hypothetical scenario that may never eventuate so soon. At least I hope.

Which brings us back to May 8. That's my future at the moment, and outside of this post, you better believe that's all I'm thinking about. Because if/when I get that job, everything you've read in the six paragraphs above gets put on indefinite hold. And I'd be quite alright with that.

My life: The present

2009-04-18T01:55:00.000+10:00

My life seems to be at a bit of a nexus right now. Just finished a whirlwind of a trip to LA; now I'm back in Sydney; and then... well, I don't know what happens then. I used my last post to tackle the (very immediate) past. Now up: my present circumstances.

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The week in LA is over.

Last Wednesday morning, after a nice flight on V Australia (had a whole row to myself!), I arrived back in Sydney. Eager to get a move on things, I jumped off the plane, darted through customs, grabbed my luggage and ran out of the airport so that I could get back to... well, yeeeeaaaaaahhhhh. There actually wasn't anything to get back to. For I am still sans job. It sucks.

This sucktitude really took hold of me sometime in early March, when, after over a month of searching for work day after day, it became apparent that the GFC was in full effect. There are hardly any jobs out there, and when one becomes available, dozens of qualified applicants flock. Yeah, it sucks. And it began to get me down.

Clearly, I needed to recharge my batteries. And with Sam, Sarah and Robert visiting for two weeks, followed by my trip to LA, I had the opportunity to do just that. The time from mid March to last Wednesday was fantastic.

Back in Sydney and refreshed -- and that includes defying jet lag yet again! -- I'm determined to renew and redouble my efforts to locate a job. So no stone goes unturned! I'm calling in all favors from anyone I know, reaching out to friends of friends of friends, calling up every Penn alum in Australia and hanging out at traffic intersections with cardboard signs that profess my desire to work. If there's an opportunity out there, I'll locate it. And then beg for the job.

But here's the thing: I can't keep on doing this in perpetuity. Amazingly, we're looking at 87 days of unemployment and counting. 87 freaking days. Nearly three months. To me, that's a staggering number, one that I never dreamed of encountering.

As much as I love Sydney, love the people, love the weather, I can't continue to go on, day by day, without any purpose or income. Something needs to change. So as much as it pains me to do so, I've given myself until May 8 to locate a job. That's four work weeks after I first arrived back in Sydney. If I don't find a job by this deadline? Well, my (potential) future awaits. And we'll tackle that last topic next.

My life: The (very immediate) past

2009-04-14T11:52:00.001+10:00

My life seems to be at a bit of a nexus right now. Just finished a whirlwind of a trip to LA; now I'm back in Sydney; and then... well, I don't know what happens then. So I'm gonna use the next posts to tackle these three topics. First: the (very immediate) past. As in, last week.

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Last I updated this thing -- prior to an impromptu rant on Kevin Smith -- I had just come off of a few good days in LA: quality time with the parents, real Mexican food with Benny and Hannah, and Dodgers-Angels with Dave.

To expound on the Dodgers game, a few highlights:

All around the stadium are large pictures of Dodger greats. Including... Nomar Garciaparra??!?

The Dodger Dog, of course. I'd include a picture here, but I was too busy wolfing it down to capture the moment.

We all know that Juan Pierre is extremely upset that he's coming off the bench this year. But did he really have to express his disappointment in this photo, the one that they show on the Jumbotron every time he comes to the plate?? Saddest man ever.

As always, the seventh inning stretch.

Friday morning featured breakfast with the parents at Huckleberry. For those in the LA area, for those who want to support Windward alum Zoe Nathan, for those who simply appreciate frickin' amazing pastries... GO! You'll enjoy. (And for a lovely dinner, I hear that Rustic Canyon, the sister establishment right down the street, is mighty good as well.)

And then: the weekend, the main event, la raison d'etre for this whole trip... it commenced.

Jack, Dave and I met up at Jack's house. Eager to leave but forced to wait for Jack's clothes to dry, Dave suggested we simply put Jack's underwear over his car's antenna and let them air dry on the way up. Problem solved!

We headed north. And we sang some songs of merriment:

We stopped for some Coffee Bean. Fan-frickin-tastic.

And within a few hours, we were in the lovely and supremely random town of Solvang. Why supremely random? Well, imagine a town from Denmark that's been dropped right into the middle of wine country in California. That's Solvang. Granted, its inhabitants aren't actually Danish, but still. Everything about the town, from the architecture to the food to the spirit, is Danish.

We promptly checked into our hotel, the Kronborg Inn, which we chose pretty much solely because of its name. I mean, it's called the Kronborg Inn! Come on!!!

As we got settled in the hotel, Jack thought it would be a great idea to pitch his new tent, which he had brought for the next night, in the hotel room. Dave and I were bewildered, of course, and we did everything in our power to make Jack's task as difficult as possible.

Eventually, Jack figured it out.

Before the night's main event, the three of us met up with Mike and Erika, who were conveniently staying in the hotel right next door, to get an early dinner at the Hitching Post, a steak house that you may remember from Sideways. I ordered the filet mignon. Now, I'm normally not one for hyperbole; in fact, I consciously avoid it as much as possible. But that very well may have been the best steak I've ever had. Perfectly cooked, unbelievably tender, mouth-watering seasoning. I was in heaven. Unfortunately, pretty much everything else in my meal -- clam chowder, French fries (the waitress swore they were mind-blowing), salad -- left something to be desired. But the steak... my LORD.

And then, the reason we came up north a day early: CHUMASH!!!! Set on an Indian reservation, Chumash Casino has become a bit of an institution with my friends. First lured by the 18-year-old minimum age, we've been going ever since we finished high school and have returned whenever possible. Opportunities to do so, however, have significantly decreased in the last few years, as the original core group has scattered at various times to New York, Washington, Toronto, Kyoto and Sydney. But this weekend presented us with the perfect storm, and we resolved to go for it.

We were excited. Pumped. Amped. Thrilled. Ecstatic. We let out a jubilant cry as we approached the lights of Chumash. We hit the casino floor and took over a blackjack table. And then, well... and then... let's just say that on this night, the casino had its way with us, as casinos sometimes do. And by 11pm, we all found ourselves back at the Kronborg. Beaten down, but comforted by the fact that we were staying at a place called the Kronborg Inn, we slept.

We awoke the next morning refreshed and reenergized. First stop: Paula's Pancake House, which was seemingly the only restaurant in town with customers. And those Danish pancakes absolutely did not disappoint, with Jack proclaiming them as possibly the best pancakes he's ever had. I can't make such a proclamation, with the banana and walnut pancakes from Clinton Street Baking Company in New York and my dad's matzah meal pancakes firmly entrenched in some order in my personal top two. But still, they were damned good.

Next stop was Los Olivos, as we killed some time before the wedding. Enjoying some wine and beer at Los Olivos Café, we just chilled. In retrospect, apart from the actual wedding, this may have been my favorite part of the whole trip. Three old friends, having some leisurely drinks, soaking in the beautiful weather, just chatting.

And then, to the wedding! But before we made it up the mountain to the farmhouse, we encountered some cows. They had been enjoying a nice, warm day under a tree. That all changed upon our arrival:

After we bored of harassing the cows, we made our way to the top of the mountain. And, my lord, what a location Hannah and Benny picked out. Here's the setting for their marriage:

And here's the farmhouse:

The whole day and night was amazing. The wedding itself was gorgeous, without a cloud in the sky. The dinner, with fried chicken and mac and cheese and mashed potatoes, was scrumptious. The reception got a little wild. Jack managed to climb up onto a beam 15 feet above the farmhouse. I was pantsed during an impromptu game of Twister. People were devouring challah dipped in Hannah's homemade fudge. And sometime in there, I called it quits.

The next morning, I was awoken to a lovely hangover and the crows of the ostriches that are kept on the farmhouse. Ever since my trip to Mission Beach, I've been terrified of large, flightless birds. So sleeping no more than 100 feet away from those beasts did not make for the most pleasant of experiences.

Before heading back off to LA, we said our goodbyes to Hannah, Benny et al.

Had half a dozen friends over to my parents' place on Sunday night; another non-wedding highlight of the trip. So good to spend some quality time with everyone in a relatively intimate setting. And along with some of my mom's amazing mushroom and barley soup and Moroccan chickpea soup, we enjoyed more breads and pastries from Huckleberry. Good stuff.

On Monday, before the beast of a flight back to Sydney, I made an obligatory stop at In N Out. Sooooooo good.

And there's the trip! From start to wedding to finish, it was perfect; I couldn't be more pleased.

Now it's back to reality. And I'll tackle that issue next.

Sadly, Kevin Smith is desperately clinging to relevancy

2009-04-13T13:41:00.000+10:00

I have a soft spot in my heart for Kevin Smith. Chasing Amy stands as one of my all-time favorite movies. I've watched Dogma at least ten times, yet somehow, it gets better upon each additional viewing. And while others worship Clerks and Mallrats much more than I do, they're still very much near and dear to my heart.

Then Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back happened. In the lead-up to the film's release, during sophomore year of college, I couldn't contain my excitement and followed all reports coming out of its production. My expectations were sky high, and even in hindsight, I don't think that they were unrealistic. In LA, I went to see it with Dave. We entered the movie giddy. We left convinced that we had just witnessed the biggest pile of dog crap ever.

Then Jersey Girl happened. If you think I got anywhere near that movie, then you really don't know me.

And since then -- with a debatable detour for Clerks II and possibly Zack and Miri Make a Porno (I haven't seen it yet) -- it seems as though Kevin has given up on actual film making and has instead focused all of his energy on simply staying in the news, however possible.

The latest case in point? Kevin's Twitter feed. Here's what he wrote sometime early (very early) Sunday morning:

Can't sleep. Blazed. Now horny. Do I wake wife or quietly tug one out to pics of wife's vag instead? Mind you: I'm smoke-dopey, so no prize.

Right. Okay. Yikes. Normally I'd let something like this go. But there's more! Because just in case that didn't creep you out enough, here's his follow-up tweet, just a few minutes later:

I'm not the "wake her" kinda guy. But also can't tug one out now, 'cause ya'll will know, and I'll feel like everyone's watching me do it.

Kev, I love you. But please, for the love of all that's holy, there are better ways to stay relevant than going for shock value. Such as, say, making good movies? Let's stick to that.

I am a jet lag slayer!

2009-04-03T15:34:00.000+11:00

Been in LA for just over 48 hours now. It's been constant action, doing one thing or another.

Had a nice flight. Left Sydney at 9pm Tuesday, watched three movies (Quantum of Solace, W and The Rocker) and some TV shows, played some blackjack and poker to brush up on my big excursion tomorrow, and landed in LA at 5pm Tuesday. Love that you arrive before you leave! Went home. Had a nice dinner with the parents. Crashed at 10pm.

Woke up Wednesday morning at 9am feeling great. Screw you, jet lag!!! Filed my taxes, took care of a few other things, then had lunch with Benihana at a Mexican restaurant. REAL MEXICAN FOOD!!! Love it. Oh, and yeah, it was great to see Benihana on my own, especially before they descend into madness with the wedding this weekend. Then I did a couple more things around the city, went back home and had another nice dinner with the 'rents.

Woke up Thursday morning, felt great again. I own you, jet lag!! Took care of a few things around the house. Got lunch with Vern in Venice. Met up with Dave and got a coffee at Huckleberry. Hit up Angels-Dodgers at Dodger Stadium! First time at Dodger Stadium in a long time. So long, in fact, that I'm not even sure when I was last there. So it was good. The Dodger Dog was good. And the Dodgers won. Who cares if it's only Spring Training?

Saturday is the wedding. I'm excited. But first, tomorrow is Kronmash! Or Chuborg, if you prefer. I know this means nothing to all but two people in the world -- for now, let's just say that there's a very close relation to me brushing up on my blackjack and poker on the flight -- but it's late and I need to go to sleep. Just because I've slayed jet lag doesn't mean that I don't have to sleep at all! So full explanation and recap to come next week.

Thank you, Sir Richard

2009-04-01T07:30:00.000+11:00

Starting 17 days ago and extending all the way through to April 8, Richard Branson has, and will be, a consistent presence in my life.

First, Sam and Sarah arrived in Sydney on March 14. And as Team ASS (Andy, Sarah, Sam) went from Sydney to Hunter Valley to Port Macquarie and back to Sydney, we adopted our slogan for the trip, Screw it, let's do it!, which was taken from the Richard Branson autobiography of the same name* that Sam was reading.

*Amazingly, Branson has written a total of THREE autobiographies. If there were three biographies of him -- hell, if there were THIRTY biographies of him -- that would be fine. Because those would all have different takes on the man, all written by different people. But no. Sir Richard has three autobiographies, all (presumably) written by himself.

Then Robert arrived 11 days ago to form Team RASS (Robert, Andy, Sarah, Sam). And we took the use of Screw it, let's do it! up to a whole new level, as it became the rallying cry for anything for which we were on the fence.

Should we jump into the cold ocean water? Screw it, let's do it!

Should we do a two-hour, hilly cliff walk even though we're ridiculously hungover? Screw it, let's do it!

Should we eat the lamb's brain from the Indonesian restaurant? Screw it, let's do it!

And so on and so forth.

Sam, Sarah and Robert have unfortunately all left. But Richard Branson? He's still lingering. For this past Saturday, V Festival -- as in Virgin Festival -- a musical festival headlined by The Killers, Snow Patrol, Kaiser Chiefs and, randomly, Madness and Vanilla Ice, took place about five minutes from my apartment. I didn't go, but many of my friends did and I could hear it from my place.

And to top it off, come 9pm today, when I fly to LA for Benihana's wedding, I will fly on V Australia -- as in Virgin Australia.

The man is omnipresent in my life right now. His motivation did Team RASS right, and I'm hoping that he'll do me equally right as I go to and from LA.

Team RASS has left the building

2009-03-28T13:32:00.000+11:00

Yeah. So that happened.

Since my last post, Robert arrived in Sydney to form Team RASS (Robert, Andy, Sarah, Sam). And in the week that the four of us were together, we conquered Sydney.

Unfortunately, that week came and went far too quickly. And now, Sam and Sarah have already arrived back in New York, Robert's currently somewhere over the Pacific en route back to Houston and I'm left to wrap my head around the last two weeks. I will hopefully provide a fairly comprehensive recap in the next few days, but until then, enjoy:

Chillaxing in the Hunter and Port

2009-03-21T08:50:00.000+11:00

We are back!

Sam, Sarah and I had a great five days --one in the Hunter Valley and four in Port Macquarie -- doing our best to "chillax" (as Sarah liked to deem it) 24/7. There was our wine tour with a crazy guide, hydro golf, St. Patty's Day celebrations at Finnian's, hanging out at the lighthouse, going to the koala hospital and, of course, getting in plenty of beach time.

The trip back yesterday featured a trip to Harry's in Newcastle because, well, it was on the way. And what trip to Australia is complete without some beautiful meat pies from Harry's?

Back in Sydney, we picked up Robert from the airport this morning and hit up the sights during the day, with the beautiful sun beating down on us. Tonight is gonna feature pizzas at The Australian Heritage Hotel with some of Australia's finest local meats: kangaroo, salt water crocodile and emu.

More to follow (including pictures?) next week.

Procrastinatin' with some Kleinballs while I curse myself

2009-03-14T14:56:00.000+11:00

Well, in case there was ever any doubt, it's now official: I'm an idiot.

Somehow, over the last several weeks, I came under the very erroneous impression that Sam and Sarah were arriving this morning. I mentally circled the date in my head, and all errands and activities this week were planned so that I'd be free today to pick them up from the airport and start our two-week adventure together.

I emailed Sam and Sarah on Wednesday, the day they were gonna head off from New York... that is, if they were to arrive in Sydney on Friday morning. I told them that I couldn't believe they'd be leaving New York "today" and that I'd be waiting for them at the airport on Friday morning. I even provided this link to my post about their visit, in which I clearly say that they'd be coming on Friday morning.

Sam and Sarah responded to my email. Below are some excerpts from each of their emails:

Email #1, from Sarah: "Still awake haven't slept yet way too pumped."
Email #2, from Sam: "I'll confirm the flight when I get to work. I can't believe this. 2 weeks in oz baby!!"
Email #3, from Sarah: "Can't believe we leave tomorrow!!!"

Any mention in these three emails that I was under the very wrong impression of which day they'd arrive on?? NO! In fact, Sarah's first email almost confirms my understanding. Was she so excited that she couldn't sleep two nights before she was scheduled to leave? Because that's the only way to interpret her words.

It wasn't until Sarah's last email, in which she says they'd be leaving "tomorrow" (in response to my email in which I said -- and I quote -- "Holy shit, you guys leave today. TODAY!!!") that I realized something was amiss. For not only did she say that they'd be leaving "tomorrow" (Thursday), but according to my calculations (which were based on my faulty understanding), she should have been about 30,000 feet over Colorado at the time she sent it. So I searched through my old emails, found Sam's original email with their flight info, and there it was: arrive Saturday morning. Yep, I'm an idiot.

ANYWAY.

Now I've been sitting in my apartment all day with nothing to do because I had left my schedule wide open to hang out with them. Now there's nothing. So in an effort to make the day pass, I figure I'd throw a couple of Kleinballs out there.

Man beats up 'kangaroo Jackie Chan' in house. A good and intriguing headline, no doubt, but after reading this story, my lord, the possibilities are endless! Someone get the New York Post on the phone! A few options that I very hastily came up with in about 3.4 seconds:

Man confuses kangaroo with lunatic ninja, goes Seven Samurai on its ass.
Kangaroo shreds mans underpants.
Chef cooks kangaroo, kangaroo's cousin attempts to exact revenge on chef's family.

Okay, I'll be the first to admit that these all could use some work -- I swear I used to be good at writing headlines -- but there are some beautiful tidbits in that article. One thing's for sure: only in Australia.

Peanut butter sales are plummeting. I've had nightmares about this. (Wait, maybe this is a good thing? All the more for me to horde?)

You may remember my Movember adventure from last November, and that for those people who donated on my behalf, I sent out a daily email with pictures of my slow-to-grow moustache. Robert, who will himself be landing here in exactly one week's time -- and don't worry, I'm positive of this date -- put together the following brilliant video that chronicles my 'stache:

This baseball off-season, if the Red Sox had signed CC Sabathia to anything comparable to what the Yankees ultimately signed him for, I would have been furious. Insanely overweight pitchers (and he's the second heaviest in baseball!!!) with huge workloads over the past two seasons (including many starts on three days rest late last year) don't exactly have the best track record one, two or seven years into the future. So I was all for the Yankees signing him to that albatross of a deal: $161 million over seven years. Anyway, I know it's only Spring Training,* but nonetheless, this pleases me to no end. Let the glorious revisionist history begin.

*And of all people, I'm the one to generally put zero stock in how players perform in March.

The National Rugby League here begins its season tonight. And just to make things really interesting in the lead-up to the season, earlier this week, one of the best players on the defending champions was accused of sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl. As if that's not insane enough, a team executive recently had the tenacity to fault the league's salary cap for creating an atmosphere in which that might happen. Riiiiiiiiight. Anyway, I hadn't even heard of this ridiculous assertion in Australia until it was picked up by an American web site. I'm not even going to try to explain; you can read the absurd logic for yourself.

Along with the beginning of the NRL season comes the beginning of the fantasy leagues, and most of my friends in my neighborhood are all in the same league. I thought I could be bad when watching a game that had implications for me in fantasy baseball, basketball or football. But these guys... yikes. They take it to a whole new level.

I guess it's comforting to know that I'm not the craziest person out there. Just an idiot.

Here comes the madness

2009-03-12T05:19:00.001+11:00

This is one of those preemptive posts, a la the end of last year, in which I give advance warning for what will be a light few weeks of blogging. I wish that this was because I was about to start a new job, and I knew that I'd be too busy to even devote a few minutes to this every day or two. Nope. Instead, the next few weeks are simply going to be madness.

First, on Friday morning, my friends Sam and Sarah fly in from New York. We're in Sydney for a brief two days before we head north to Hunter Valley for a wine tour, spend the night in a hotel/brewery (!!), then drive a few hours further north to Port Macquarie for three days of R&R. (Minus the rest and relaxation, of course.)

The day after we get back to Sydney, Robert arrives from Houston (via Dana Point and Disneyland). Combined, the four of us make up Team Oz -- with previous incarnations as Team Maine and Team Martha's -- and in Sydney for a full week, we will go hog wild.

Team Oz! Featuring Robert as The Lion, Sam as The Scarecrow, Sarah as Dorothy and yours truly as The Tin Man.

No definitive plans at the moment, but at the minimum, we'll be seeing the big sites, hitting up the local Portuguese Chicken establishments (they're all versed in the PCW) and absolutely playing some pitch and putt. Because this group of four has a somewhat -- nay, a very -- unhealthy obsession with pitch and putt, going back to when we all lived in New York and made many a trip to Queens' Flushing Meadows pitch and putt course.

Team Oz (with Maz on the far right) at the Flushing Meadows pitch and putt course. I won that day. I always beat those guys.

Sam and Sarah leave on the 26th, with Robert departing a day later. And that gives me three days to prepare for what is by far the most important event of the year: my fantasy baseball draft. Go ahead and make fun of me. I don't care.

And then, a day after the draft, I fly out to LA for the wedding of my friends, Benny and Hannah (aka Benihana).* I'm there for a week, and in addition to the wedding, I already have several things planned: Bay Cities Deli, maybe a Dodgers spring training game, and CHUMASH!! (If you don't know, don't ask. Words would never do it justice.)

*In a perfect coincidence, the day I fly out is also the last day that I can legally remain in Australia. That's right: my DOD is upon us! So it's quite serendipitous that Benihana is getting married when they are, as I'll also use the trip to reenter Australia on a tourist visa.

The Monday after the wedding, I fly back to Sydney, ready to renew my job search. Because, yeah, that's really what I should be doing this entire month.

Maybe I'll find time to write about a few things over the next few weeks. That would be nice, for both you and me. But most likely, it won't happen. So until then, here's to the Northern Hemisphere's merciful exit out of winter, to the glory of Spring Training, to March Madness, to Benihana.

Getting back to the basics

2009-03-11T05:00:00.001+11:00

I'm a broken record. The rationalization and impetus for seemingly every one of my posts in the last month has had something to do with my (and my roommates') unemployment. So what the hell... here's one more.

Recently, we've been dedicating ourselves to the simple things in life. Specifically, we're starting to make things from scratch. Because (a) we have the time and (b) it's cheaper. A win-win! (And according to this article, we're apparently not the only ones who feel this way. Stupid GFC.) Here's what we've been up to:

Brewing beer

I covered most of this in this post from a few weeks ago. And Little Bear Brewery is still going strong! We just bottled our fourth batch of beer -- modeled after Newcastle Brown Ale -- and are about to start work on a ginger beer. To the left is our wheat beer, nicknamed Wheat Bear. It has a really great aroma and nice initial taste, but the aftertaste is currently a bit bitter. We're hoping that this gets better with more time for maturation.

Even more exciting is the stash of beer that we're starting to build up. Behold (part of) our stockpile, currently at 114 bottles!!

That's 85.5 liters (22.5 gallons) of beer!!

Growing vegetables

This has mostly been Shorty's labor of love. On our balcony, we now are growing the following: tomatoes, roma tomatoes, basil, coriander, peppermint, spring onions and lettuce. They all still need some time to grow, but once they're ready, we can cross those items off the weekly shopping list!

Some tomatoes and herbs.

Lettuce.

In the works for the future is some rocket (arugula), chili and a lemon tree.

Baking bread

Shorty's girlfriend was kind enough to give us her family's bread machine, which had been collecting dust in their garage for the last few years. Our apartment, on the other hand... we're putting it to extreme use.

After starting off with some basic white breads, we're starting to spread our wings a bit. Recent experiments have included French bread (as seen to the left), cajun jalapeno bread, pesto and pinenut bread, banana bread and herb bread. There's another thing to cross off the shopping list... although now we're buying a lot of flour.

Homemade pasta

The beautiful thing about the bread maker is that it does so much more than make bread! For example, it makes pasta dough. Taking advantage of that, I made some ravioli the other day. This was a brutally long and painstakingly monotonous process -- it takes forever to flatten the dough, make the filling, drop it onto the dough and then seal the dough around it -- but the result was very nice.

Below is a picture of some ravioli (with much pasta sauce on top) and homemade bread with garlic and cheese. Good stuff.

I also made some linguine (or something resembling it) last night, which was much easier to do. Maybe I'll just stick to that in the future.

Homemade pizza

Another use for the bread maker: pizza dough! Short took the lead on this one, and created several different pizzas the other night. Here's a sequence of pictures of him making it:

Spreading out the sauce -- in this case, barbecue -- on the dough.

Adding some cheese.

The toppings: chicken, onion, red pepper, hot pepper, etc.

Some more cheese!

The final product.

Coffee

And lastly, Short surprised us last week with a cappuccino/espresso maker! So now we're making ourselves fresh lattes and cappuccinos and whatnot.

A return to the basics! We clearly have the time. It's saving us money. The perfect win-win.

This cannot wait

2009-03-06T03:25:00.000+11:00

Normally, the below would simply be thrown into the mix of ramblings, links, and whatnot the next time I threw some Kleinballs. But this video... well, it just cannot wait. It must be shared with the world. Right now.

I've watched this three times, and I still don't know what to think of it. Should I be impressed? Horrified? Bewildered? I'm not sure. So for now, I'm simply speechless. I am without speech.

The quest for a six

2009-03-04T09:19:00.000+11:00

March is upon us. This is notable for a variety of reasons, but most applicable to my purposes here, it means the following two things:

First, the Australian summer is unfortunately coming to an end. Along with lowering temperatures, earlier sunsets and fewer beach days, it also means that the cricket season is winding down. Specifically, I'm talking about the cricket season for Fumblers-B, my friends' team that I occasionally play for.

Second, the one-month countdown on my DOD has officially commenced, and I still have no legitimate job prospects. (I actually have three interviews tomorrow -- all first interviews -- but I've long since learned not to get my hopes up too early in the process.) The longer this job drought goes on, the more I fear that I might have to call an end to this Australian adventure.

Pondering these two items the other day, it occurred to me that my last ever opportunities to play organized cricket could be over the next few weeks, as Fumblers-B's regular season ends and they enter the playoffs.* It's a sobering thought -- a thought I'd rather not even consider -- but nonetheless a very real and possible scenario.

*You know what one good thing will come from the end of the season? The end of season trip!!! Many more details to come on this as planning gets under way.

As far as I'm concerned, my cricket playing experiences thus far have been quite comprehensive and fulfilling. I've batted many times. I've played wicketkeeper. I've made a few catches. I've actually bowled six overs. Granted, I did none of these things well -- okay, I did most of these things quite poorly -- but for someone who only gained any appreciation for the sport a little over a year ago, I think this is a body of work of which to be proud.

Anyway. As I reflected back on all of this the other day, it occurred to me that there's one thing I haven't yet done on the cricket field: hit a six.* So last week, as I was scheduled to play in a match on the approaching Saturday, I announced to the rest of Fumblers-B that it was my intention to do just that.

*For those not familiar with cricket, a six is essentially equivalent to a home run in baseball. Hit the ball on the fly over the fence (or rope) and you're awarded six runs.

On Saturday, I was ready. I had visualized. I had gone to a practice session on Friday, and batted pretty well. I had gotten a good night of sleep. I had eaten my Wheaties.

Around 11:30 or so, after over two tortuous hours of waiting, my turn to bat came up. I walked out to the pitch, the guys on my team knowing full well what my intentions were.

The bowler approached. Mentally, I was there, focused only on watching the ball come out of his hand. The bowler released the ball, and I immediately saw that it was headed outside off stump (in baseball terms, it was going to be outside), so I stepped towards the ball and took a hard swing. But the ball was too far outside, and I missed.

Little did I know that that would be the only ball I'd face.

With that ball being the last of an over, Maz started the next over on strike (meaning that he was now facing the balls). And when he hit a ball, he aggressively called for us to run. I ran hard but immediately saw that my chances to make it safely to the other end of the pitch were small. So I prepared to dive, hoping that the wicketkeeper might fumble the thrown ball before he could get me out.

The next two seconds seemed to take a lifetime.

The wicketkeeper did not fumble the ball; he caught it cleanly and knocked the bales off the wicket. I was out.

I started to slow up.

The wicketkeeper's momentum, as he started celebrating, took him right towards me.

Seeing the wicketkeeper heading into my path, I really hit the brakes.

I stepped on a thin layer of dirt on the pitch.

I slipped on the dirt.

I fell, with my forehead colliding with the wicketkeeper's knee.

I hit my tailbone on the pitch.

I smacked the back of my head against the pitch.

I was out.

After about half a minute on the ground, I groggily got up and walked off the field. My chance for a six had passed for the day, perhaps -- although hopefully not -- forever. This wasn't exactly how I had visualized it.

Linkin' to some Kleinballs

2009-03-01T08:21:00.000+11:00

One would think that now that I have almost nothing to do every day, I'd be blogging a lot more. And I think that line of thought held true for a few weeks. But now, I've reached a point of (non-)critical mass where I have so little to do, that I just do none of it. It sucks.

ANYWAY, instead of recapping my fascinating week, full of sitting in front of my computer and, ummmm, other stuff, I'll regale you with some of the more interesting links and videos that I've recently come across.

Why are you fat? This is why. There's some ghastly stuff on here -- sadly, about 80% of it still looks delicious to me, with the other 20% generally composed of people just trying to put the most ridiculous concoction of crap together -- but this one takes the cake: "Chicken fried steak, chicken-fried bacon, a country sausage, a fried egg, a fried green tomato topped with cheddar cheese and sandwiched between buns toasted in bacon fat, all served with a gravy dipping sauce." Honestly, I was fine with this right up until the part about the buns being toasted in freaking bacon fat.

For the last few years, I've had this nagging urge to join the Ukranian army. However, I could never pinpoint what so compelled me. Now, I have the answer:*

*Some things are just so absurd that, even when spoken in a completely foreign language, no translation is necessary. But for some more shits and giggles, here you go.

Just because. It's been too long.

Twitter is still a mystery to me. I love how insanely involved Shaq is. I love my feeds from CNN, Drudge, ESPN and MLB. And with the Twitter Influence Calculator, my insignificance on that monster has been confirmed. For according to it, my relative influence is "just emerging."* Whatever.

*Shaq's relative influence, on the other hand, has been deemed "astonishing." And he's ranked as the 59th most influential user on Twitter. I love Shaq.**

**Speaking of how cool Shaq is: Steve Kerr, general manager of the Suns, gave an interview a few weeks ago in which he said that after most Suns home games, Shaq goes shopping at Wal-Mart. Now, that alone is a ridiculous fact. Not just that Shaq goes shopping at Wal-Mart, but also that he does so AFTER games. Which would mean that he generally goes around or after midnight. But what's REALLY great is that after he makes his purchase, he often will tell the people working there that he'll pay for the next ten customers in line. Shaquille O'Neal, ladies and gentlemen.

Words often have different pronunciations in the US and Australia (and many other countries). In the US, for example, oregano is something like oh-RAY-geh-no. In Australia, it's oh-reh-GAH-no. Or garage is ge-RAJ in the US, GAH-raj in Australia. And that's fine. I get that. But what I've never gotten is how brand names often have different pronunciations in different countries. Because if I was the keeper of an international brand -- living in a global economy -- I'd want that brand's name to be pronounced consistently throughout the world. This, however, doesn't always happen. Consider:

It's Hyundai. Like Sunday. But in Australia? Consider:

And this doesn't just happen with Hyundai. Same goes for other brands, like Nokia (noh-KEE-yah vs. noh-KYAH). I don't get it.

Lastly, my newest addiction: sporcle.com. Try any of the games once. Just once. And you'll be hooked.

And... we're back at it

2009-02-25T14:09:00.000+11:00

Another weekend has come and gone. And although it's not like I went back to work on Monday, I'm still lamenting its passing. For it was a good one.

As prefaced here last week, Friday was our friend Jez's buck's night up in Newcastle. With the theme being red, Short, Maz, Yogi and I procured some hideous, bright red wigs to go along with our red shirts. Really, they couldn't have been more awful/perfect. Here are a few shots to illustrate:

Anyway, as I said in my last post, while I didn't know what we'd be up to at the party, I was positive that we'd (a) stop at Harry's and (b) get up to some shenanigans. Well... hmmmm. The first one very unfortunately didn't happen. And the second one? Well, I'm still not sure. It was very fun -- don't get me wrong -- but many of Jez's friends up in Newcastle are very religious. A ridiculous bachelor party* full of tomfoolery this does not allow for. But still. It was good.

*I did a very quick search on why it's called a bachelor party in the US and buck's night in Australia, and this is the best I could come up with... at least without consuming too much of my precious time. Other names around the world apparently include stag party, stag night, stag do and bull's party. Whatever.

HOWEVER, I found the Wikipedia entry on bachelor party/buck's night to be quite amusing. Especially the section on Australia. Consider: "The groom's mates often, after heavy drinking, subject the groom to various humiliations, sometimes in public. These often include leaving him tied naked to a pole or placing him on an airplane to a remote location. It has also been quite common to start the humiliation at the beginning of the night by dressing the buck up as a female or making him wear a 'mankini'."

Tying the groom naked to a pole? Placing him on a plane to a remote location??!? Making him wear a mankini???!??!?! HILARIOUS!! Clearly I did not experience your "typical" Australian buck's night. That is, of course, assuming the description on Wikipedia is accurate. Which it always is.

Saturday was a wash. Big time. Quite hung over, we drove back to Sydney and then did nothing. It was fantastic.

Sunday was Tropfest, the largest short film festival in the world. Broadcast simultaneously in open-air settings in each of the capital cities, it features 16 short films. The movies started at 7:30pm, but a few of us got down to the Domain (located next to the Botanical Gardens) by 3pm to get a good spot, soak up the sun and get our picnic on. It was good.

And now it's the week. Back to the job hunt.

Going back to Newy

2009-02-20T16:31:00.000+11:00

By my count, I've made the two-hour drive north to Newcastle three times since I moved to Sydney nearly a year and a half ago. The first time was for a very quick car tour with Jez, after our weekend in Forster. Then I came back for the infamous Fumblers-B Newy Decathlon (chronicled here, here and here). And the last time... well, I don't believe I ever recapped the horrific events of that fateful Saturday night here, but it involved myself, a bouncer, some shoving, and a torn shirt. I'm still emotionally scarred from the incident, so that's about as much as I'm willing to share at the moment.

Anyway. Late tomorrow morning, I'm going back to Newy for a fourth time. And this time, it's for Jez's buck's night (better known in the US as a bachelor party*). I have no idea what's planned, but we've been told that there will be plenty of alcohol, to bring a spare change of clothes and that the theme is red.** What I do know is that (a) our car will be making the obligatory mecca to Harry's beforehand and (b) there will be shenanigans. And no, I'm not talking about the restaurant with all the goofy shit on the walls and the mozzarella sticks.

*I'm actually not sure why it's called a buck's night. I should probably look that up. Same goes for hen nights, aka bachelorette parties. I'm sure it's all on Wikipedia or something, but our Internet's being shitty right now, so I really couldn't be bothered.

**This is due to Jez's very red hair. On our way up there, we'll be stopping at some shops to find some ridiculous, red outfits. As far as I'm concerned, the more ridiculous, the better.

Recap (and pictures?) to follow next week? I'm Ron Burgundy?

Home brew: it gives my life meaning!

2009-02-19T06:00:00.000+11:00

So. Unemployment is really starting to hit home. I have no solid leads for a new job, and there's seemingly nothing on the horizon. I'm progressively sleeping in later. I'm running out of things to do, and the fact that Sydney's been hit with an awful week of weather has not helped the cause. I've officially lost track of what day it is. The money is dwindling, day by excruciating day. And my potential DOD (day of deportation) just lingers over me.

Of course, I'm not alone. For I currently live in an apartment full of unemployeds. On the weekends last year, I'd sleep in and wake up to an apartment full of people. Now, I do that on a Tuesday. Or a Thursday. Or, well, every day. So we're all very much in this together.

We needed something to do, clearly. To keep us occupied, keep us motivated, keep us sane. The main caveat, of course, was that this activity couldn't be expensive.

And that's when one of Maz's friends introduced us to the world of home brewing. At first, I think we were all skeptical, and had many questions. That would be a really time consuming, right? Isn't it a complicated process? And doesn't it take forever to yield something that's not only alcoholic but actually tastes good?

Quickly, these concerns were put to rest. Yes, there'd be some work, although it wouldn't be nearly as much as we first imagined. (But would it have been a bad thing if it was that labor-intensive?? We have nothing but time!) And the actual process, after you get past what can look like a daunting set of instructions, only has to be as complicated as you want it to be. And it doesn't take long at all; on the shorter end, you can have a quality beer ready to drink within two weeks!

So, to recap: a cheap task that will keep us occupied... and that task involves producing alcohol??!?* Ummmmm, where do we sign up???

*Yeah, we might currently be in a reduced-spending mode, but you know that we're not sacrificing alcohol. God forbid.

Maz and Short bravely did the first few batches: first an Australian-style lager, then a European-style lager, then an India Pale Ale. Each beer was surprisingly good, and each one seemed to improve upon the last.

Yogi and I, encouraged by the results, teamed up to have a crack as well. But before starting, there were a few matters to attend to. First was our "brewery's" name. And for that we decided on Little Bear Brewery, which is derived from parts of each of our names. In German, Klein means small or little. And Yogi's name is like, well, Yogi Bear. So Little Bear it was! Simple, straightforward, catchy. A logo is very slowly in the works.

The second matter to attend to before starting was collecting bottles in which to bottle the beer. Because while Maz and Short bottled their beer in plastic bottles that they simply bought, we decided to bottle our beer in glass bottles. This, however, posed the challenge of acquiring said bottles. And as far as we were concerned, there was only one way to do that: drink ourselves silly! So for the next several weeks, just about every time we bought beer, whether it was to casually drink at our apartment or to rambunctiously drink at a house party, we'd buy 750 ml (25 fl oz) long necks of Cooper's Pale Ale. Why Cooper's? Well, it's a solid beer, the bottles' brown glass is good for keeping light out, and the tops aren't twist off. (This last point was important because our cap press can't put bottle caps on twist tops.) And why 750 ml bottles? Well, each batch of home brew nets about 23 liters of beer. (For the metric system-challenged, that's roughly equivalent to six gallons. Let me repeat that: SIX GALLONS OF BEER!!!) So we could either collect 60 regular-sized bottles or 30 long necks. And after a few weeks of calculations, we concluded that 30 bottles is precisely two times more manageable than 60. We're still not sure if that's purely coincidental or not.

For about a month we drank those long necks, slowly accumulating our stock. And finally, after a big Australia Day Weekend in late January to cap off this monstrous month of long neck after long neck, we reached our goal. Our hearts were content. Our livers were furious. We were ready to start brewing.

We made a trip to Dave's Home Brew in North Sydney, consulted with Dave himself on our first beer and settled on modeling it after an Australian pale ale called Little Creatures.

Yogi and I came back to the apartment, cleaned and sterilized all our materials, mixed up the various ingredients (boiling water, liquid malt extract, brewing sugar, hops, yeast and enough cool water to get to 23 liters) and then... well, we let it sit for a week to allow for the mixture to get its fermentation on. Then we cleaned and sterilized our 30 bottles, filled each one with our precious beer, added carbonation drops, capped the bottles and then... well, we let it sit for another week to carbonate and mature.

And that's it! That's it! One week after bottling, Yogi and I had our first sips of what we had come to call Bears and Creatures Pale Ale.* A week probably didn't give the beer quite enough time to mature -- it's generally recommended that you wait at least two weeks -- but our curiosity got the best of us. And you know what? It was still great! Fantastic! I couldn't have been much more pleased. A really rich, hoppy flavor and a great amber color. The head left a little to be desired, but we're hoping that that develops a little more in the coming weeks.

Now we're on to our second batch, which is a wheat bear. Tentatively we're calling it Wheat Bear,** and we just bottled it this morning.

*The origins of this name are fairly straightforward. Our "brewery" is Little Bear. And the beer we modeled this batch after was Little Creatures Pale Ale. So knock off the "Little" from each name and you have Bears and Creatures Pale Ale.

**Really hope I don't need to explain this name!

Maz and Shorty bottled their fourth batch the other day, and they've recently dedicated themselves to glass bottles as well. However, this poses our next challenge: accumulating more bottles! But this time, we've spared our livers and have purchased 84 empty Cooper's long necks on eBay. That will bring our bottle collection to 140, which is enough for five batches of beer. So I'm hoping that's all the bottles we'll ever need. But if it isn't, well, that just means that we'd have 105 liters (NEARLY 28 GALLONS!) of beer. And that should hold us over for a while. I think.

AIM: An obituary

2009-02-14T08:50:00.000+11:00

Sunday was a historic day for me. A day of introspection, of retrospection, of... of... nah, can't think of any more applicable "spection" words. Anyway. As I did some housekeeping on my computer, deleting old files and uninstalling programs I don't use anymore, I came across AOL Instant Messenger.

At first, my eyes wandered past it. But then I paused. I realized that I hadn't used AIM for months. Years, maybe. I looked back at the program. I stared at it. I contemplated. And after a minute or so of back-and-forth internal debate, I did it. I did what a short few years ago I would have considered absolutely unfathomable, perhaps even blasphemous: I uninstalled AOL Instant Messenger.

AIM: You were good -- nay, you were great -- to me. Let me count the ways.

One. We grew together. As you gained popularity as just one part of the larger AOL program, I started to use you with increasing frequency in high school. And then when you proclaimed your independence and went off on your own (leaving the rest of the short-lived AOL empire to wilt away), so did I go off on my own in college. And for those four years, you were an integral and very necessary part of my life. Hell, my whole college experience could probably be told through conversations that I had using you.

Two. You carried the torch of my "vhing9" screen name,* and you represented it well. That name became a part of me; to many, it defined me. Now, with this final nail in your proverbial coffin, so too do I place a nail in that of vhing9's.

*What a supremely random screen name. When I first started my account, I was obsessed with Ving Rhames. I knew there was a random 'H' in his name somewhere, and erroneously thought that it was in his first name. So I tried to get the screen name "vhing". Preposterously, this was taken, so I tacked my favorite number onto the end.

Three. The away messages. Oh, the away messages! The hours I devoted to coming up with witty things to say -- just to elicit maybe two or three responses from people -- is incalculable. And during my peak years with you, no notable quote from a friend, a movie, a TV show, a book, a newspaper column or a song would escape my notice.*

*Some of my favorites:
"How could it be boron, you goddamned moron??!?!" -- an irate Paul Slocombe to a scared Todd Fasen
"He's probably the least qualified person ever to be nominated by a major party... What is his accomplishment? That he's no longer an obnoxious drunk?" -- Ronald Reagan on George Walker Bush
"It's important to have a job that makes a difference, boys. That's why I manually masturbate caged animals for artificial insemination." -- Clerks
"Clinton lied. A man might forget where he parks or where he lives, but he never forgets oral sex, no matter how bad it is." -- Barb Bush
"You know, there's a million fine-looking women in the world, but they don't all bring you lasagna at work. Most of them just cheat on you." -- Silent Bob
That's what you meant to me.

Of course, you weren't just special to me; you were a gift to the world. For it was you who championed the instant messaging revolution, and that has opened the doors for so many Internet innovations that have followed. Without you, there might not be Gchat. Or Facebook chat. Or Twitter. Or Skype. We'll never know for certain what new programs and technologies you inspired, directly or indirectly, but it's safe to say that you certainly had an impact on a vast majority of them.

For this, you belong in the Pantheon of revolutionary and influential web programs, somewhere after Mosaic (generally credited as the web browser that set off the explosion of the Internet's popularity) and before Napster.

But now it's over. I've moved on. The world has moved on. There are so many more ways to communicate, so many more efficient ways that are much more integrated into my daily life. But I won't forget you; you will forever be part of my personal history and live in my conscious.

RIP, AIM.

Throwin' some Super Klein-Bowls

2009-02-11T09:01:00.001+11:00

It had been a long time since I watched a full football game, professional or college. Not this season. Not Super Bowl 42.* Maybe sometime last season. Maybe not. Honestly, I can't remember. But with my unemployment in full effect circa 10:30am last Monday, I was able to soak up the entirety of Super Bowl 43 in all its glory. And it was fantastic.

As I soberly described when I threw some Kleinballs the other day, far too many of my friends are out of a job. And since the Super Bowl, for whatever reason, is actually sort of a big deal here,** and none of us had anything better to do on a Monday morning, I decided to have a little soiree at my place.

*No way am I gonna take the time to figure out those Roman numerals.

**Honestly, I have no idea why it's big here. But, you know, it is the Super Bowl.

I decided that this would have to be as authentic a Super Bowl party as possible, with a real celebration of Americana. And the first order of business was the food. For this, I decided that the main dish would be what my dear and deadbeat of a friend Ross has dubbed "manchos". That's right: nachos for MEN.

How good does that look??!? Corn chips, cheese, refried beans, beef with chilli seasoning, onion, tomato and jalapeno... lots of jalapeno.* And best of all, the above photo actually shows a very incomplete dish. For after it was taken, a very, very, very liberal extra layer of cheese was added. Good times.**

*I'm just gonna say it: Australians are idiots when it comes to anything Latino. Maybe we -- and by "we" I mean Americans -- are used to it because of all the Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, etc in the States, but most Australians are really ignorant of the language and food.

Take, for example, when I bought the jalapenos at the store. The woman scanning my food saw them, gave a bit of a blank stare and asked, "What are these?" I responded, "Jalapenos." She typed away on her screen, trying to bring up the right code. Ten seconds later: "I can't find it in here. How do you spell it? Is it h-a-l...??" I stopped her. "No, no. It's j-a-l-a-p-e-n-o." She typed away. Ten seconds later: "I still can't find it. So it's h-a-j-a-l...??" I stopped her again, a little annoyed: "No! J-a-l-a-p-e-n-o. No 'H'." Finally, mercifully, she found it.

Relaying this story to my friends back at my place, they laughed and one of them suggested that I should have just pronounced it phonetically: jah-lah-PAY-no. And another one countered that she would have come back with, "Oh! The jah-LAH-peh-nos! I love those things!"

**While we're on the topic, why don't you give the manchos a "10" rating on my new favorite web site, WouldYouEatIt.net.

Next came the guacamole. For this, I used a recipe I found online, and then doubled the amount of green chillies that it called for. Awesome.

And lastly came the booze. And for this, there was only one way to go: The King of Beers. So the day before, I bought a case, brought it home and put the beers in the fridge. But I wasn't done, oh no. It was time to get as American as absolutely possible. And so, using the cardboard from the beer case, I present to you this:

You know you love it.

Maz, one of my roommates, had a few bets on the game. One of them was that Roethlisberger would score the first touchdown, which was courtesy of a tip from me. So when Big Ben ran that broken play in for a touchdown on the Steelers' first drive, we went nuts. NUTS! Maz and I were jumping up and down and shared in a moment of bromance as we embraced. I was so proud of myself. And then, when it was called back on a challenge, well, that sucked. Ahhhh, the joys of gambling.

From what I understand, Ben Graham, the Australian punter for the Cardinals (and ex-Australian Rules Football star), got some press in the US during the two weeks leading up to the game, as he was the first Aussie ever to play in the Super Bowl. Now, to get a sense of how much attention he received here during the game, I want you to take whatever mentions he received during the telecast from the States (as far as I can tell, that consisted of one graphic that said "Ben Graham: first Australian to play in Super Bowl")... and then multiply it by about 8,568. Because when everyone in the States went to commercial and were treated to porn, we had a studio of Australian analysts gushing over Graham and breaking down every single one of his punts. It was hilarious, especially from my perspective. But hey, I guess that's the hook here.

One thing I absolutely won't complain about was the feed that we got for the game. Last year, we received some feed meant for international audiences, with play-by-play by Dick Stockton and color commentary by Sterling Sharpe. My lord, it was awful. AWFUL!* This year, we got the same feed as in the US, with Al Michaels and John Madden. Say what you want about Michaels and Madden (or Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, who did last year's game), but for me, to have access to the regular telecast for this year's game, that was heaven on earth.

*Here's what I wrote to a friend shortly after last year's game: "Stockton was passable, but Sharpe... my GOD! He is such an idiot. As the Pats marched down the field to reclaim the lead, he kept saying, 'This is perfect for the Giants! The clock's still running, the Pats aren't picking up any big plays, this is going perfectly for them!' Meanwhile, the Pats are absolutely picking apart the Giants' defense. So what if they're only picking up 5 yards per play? So what if the clock's still running? Despite what happened on the Giants' next possession, that was a perfect march down the field! And on the Giants' next possession, on that play where Eli under threw Burress to just miss a first down, Sharpe says, 'It doesn't get any better than that!' Heck??" Yes. Heck, indeed.

Hey -- I don't think I ever wrote anything about Australia Day! Well, yeah, it was good. Barbecue at my place, Short's famous potato bake, Snellfinger, many drinks. Then we went to a bar that had some karaoke on and watched in pure delight as some guy, drunk out of his mind, simply tipped over halfway through his song.

And while we're on a tangent, the Penn men's basketball team currently has a ludicrous 1-3 record in Ivy League play. That includes losses to freaking Dartmouth and freaking Columbia. Earlier this decade, if you told me that I'd ever utter those words, I would have laughed you out of a room. Excuse me while my head explodes.

I've heard a lot of mixed reviews about Bruce Springsteen's halftime show. For the detractors, the argument generally seems to center around how it was cheesy and over-the-top and maybe a little campy. And I absolutely agree with that assessment; it was all of those things. But I guess I had a different interpretation of the intent; I think it was a conscious effort on the Boss' part to get a bit ridiculous, as if he just wanted to go out there and celebrate the biggest day in American sports by having a fun, goofy time. So while others disliked the performance, I found it to be a little endearing. Although he may have gone too far when he decided to rocket his crotch into millions of homes around the world. What I want to know is, where's the uproar??!? The fact that there hasn't been a backlash equal to that of the wardrobe malfunction tells me that all the politicians and pundits out there clearly have some personal vendetta against Janet and JT Two.*

*JT One, of course, being James Taylor.

And hey, have you ever noticed the resemblance between Larry Fitzgerald and Ronaldinho? I hadn't, but Shorty picked that up during the game, and it's definitely there. Sports Illustrated clearly agrees as well:

Here's a very cool feature from the New York Times, showing what words appeared in Twitter messages the most over the course of the game. I'm still trying to figure Twitter out -- don't forget that you can follow me here! -- but just the fact that we have the technology to do something like this... very cool.

Oh, and the commercials! Ummmm, yeah. They didn't show those here -- they were far too busy breaking down every one of Ben Graham's butt scratches on the bench -- and despite their omnipresence on the web, I somehow haven't found the time to watch them. Even the porn.

I'm embarrassingly giddy

2009-02-09T04:09:00.000+11:00

As if Joe Torre's recent book wasn't damaging enough, with the latest news that he tested postive for steroids in 2003, Alex Rodriguez's name is now forever tarnished. And I'm finding myself giddy. Embarrassingly so.

I really shouldn't allow myself to get so excited at the misfortune of others. (Then again, he did bring this completely upon himself.) But I think many of us here know how much I loathe the man. Not just because he's a Yankee. But because of how fake he seems, how desperately and disgustingly he apparently needs to be loved, how everything in the winter of 2003/04 went down,* the fight with Jason Varitek,** the slap in Game 6 of the 2004 ALCS, his purple lips, how he selfishly announced his free agency in the middle of the 2007 World Series, all of the nauseating rumors about Madonna and, well, just look at him!

*The ironic part is that he actually did the Red Sox right with most of his actions during that off-season. Aaron Boone, on the other hand... he's not only the man who ripped my heart out of my chest on October 16, 2003, threw it on the ground, defecated on it, put it in a paper bag in front of Grady Little's house and lit it on fire so that Grady could stomp all over it -- wow, yeah, still painful... but by ripping up his knee that same off-season, thus allowing the Yankees to void his contract, he's probably also the person most responsible for A-Rod landing in New York. But still, despite this ability to rationally break the situation down, I hate A-Rod -- and only A-Rod -- for how it all went down. It's completely illogical, I know. I don't care.

**"We don't throw at .260 hitters!"

One day, maybe I'll stop being so petty. Not today.

Throwin' some Kleinballs in the GFC

2009-02-08T17:06:00.003+11:00

Sorry for the mini hiatus. That post on the Ascoto's didn't just write itself, you know. It was draining! So I needed to take some time off, take a deep breath and regroup. And now that the batteries are recharged, what better way to come back than by throwin' a couple of Kleinballs editions at you over the next week! It's been a while since we've done even one of these; brace yourselves.

Now, I've heard all sorts of reports of doom and gloom out of the States about the global financial crisis (henceforth to be known on this blog as the GFC), but what's happening with myself and many of my other friends here... well, in the words of Luke Wilson's newscaster character in Anchorman, this getting to be ri-God-damn-diculous.

Currently, my entire apartment is unemployed. As we all know, I was laid off almost three weeks ago. Another one of us was let go a week later. Another was going to start a job this month... until the employer called to say they were postponing his start date by six months. And the last, knowing that his old company would shortly be letting people go, left his job a few months ago and went to grad school.

An entire apartment of unemployeds. Fun. But that's not all! For if you count our group of 12 friends that live within a three block radius of each other here, EIGHT of us are unemployed. That's right: our unemployment rate is 67%! Ummmm, yikes.

Below is a lovely illustration of exactly how much havoc the GFC has wrecked upon banks.* Big ups to Santander (whoever those guys are) and JP Morgan for managing to retain at least half of their market cap from a mere 18 months ago. Can't really say the same for Citigroup and RBS. Yeah. Yikes.

*Okay, after uploading that picture, I see it's pretty much impossible to make out a lot of the writing. To view it at a much larger and more legible size, you can click on it. But the point is that those big blue circles -- representing each bank's market cap from Q2 2007 -- absolutely dwarfs the small green circles, which represent each bank's current market cap.

And just to really depress the shit out of everyone (in case I haven't sufficiently done so yet), there's a KFC near our apartment that has had "Now hiring" on its marquee* for at least six years, ever since I first came to Sydney. This has been an ongoing joke among some of my friends, as if KFC can never hold on to employees long enough to stop hiring new ones. Well, guess what? It's down now, my friends. It's down now.

*Can you call those signs outside of fast food joints a "marquee"? Or should usage of that term really be limited to big signs at Madison Square Garden or The Mirage or grandiose places like that? Well, you know what I mean by the term, right? Like those McDonald's signs that say "Billions and billions served"?**

**Remember when McDonald's actually gave a precise number of billions of people served? Like "87 billion served"? Why don't they still do that? Has it become too hard to count? But who would call them on that if they just made a guesstimation? Anyway.

You may remember this video, titled "Where the Hell is Matt?", which I included in this Kleinballs entry way back in June. Well, after watching the below video, in which the folks at First Round Capital stole the idea and had the people in all their offices dance around like a bunch of idiots, I'm fairly confident that if you played that song over a video of a monkey taking a crap, you'd still consider it to be the most profound and uplifting thing you've ever seen. My God, the music!

Just got access to Season 5 of Entourage a few days ago and have blown through it. I've come away with two thoughts. First, before this past week, how come only one person told me there was a character named Andrew Klein on the show, when those episodes aired in the US three months ago??!!?!? Come on, people! And second, the scene at the end of Episode 7, where Ari tells Vince that he's been offered the studio head job, killed me. Killed me. Maybe Adrian Grenier can't act worth a lick, but Jeremy Piven, in the most beautifully subtle way possible, absolutely nailed that scene. And when Vince closes the window shade on Ari, who was helplessly looking to him from outside for any sign of encouragement, well, it was for moments like that that the term "cold blooded" was invented.

At 3pm last Wednesday, I received a call from an agency I had sent my resume to. They asked me to come in at 8am the next morning, and I responded as enthusiastically as anyone could when asked if they'd like to go to an 8am interview, epecially when the rest of their day is wide open. And then the kicker from the agency: "Can you please put together a PowerPoint presentation that illustrates your viewpoint on the customer life cycle with a credit card?" So of course, I responded as enthusiastically as anyone could when faced with the task of preparing a presentation on the customer life cycle with a credit card in 17 hours. And then, this unemployed guy came damn near close to pulling my first all-nighter since college. Ahhh, the things we do for the GFC...

PCW: The Ascoto's

2009-02-03T08:21:00.002+11:00

You take the blue pill -- the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill -- you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

- Morpheus, The Matrix

We took the red pill. And everything we knew -- well, everything we thought we knew -- is no more. And so, we enter the next chapter in the Portuguese Chicken Wars.

THE BACKGROUND

It all started here, with my nice, little anecdote about how I had been caught in the middle of a vicious feud amongst the three Portuguese chicken restaurants in my neighborhood, all separated by a one minute walk. The bad blood, according to the post, came to a head when a fire gutted Ogalo, one of the original two restaurants (the other being Ole). Some people allege that Ogalo burned itself down to claim insurance money and rebuild a new and better store. Others say that Portogali, the newcomer to the Portuguese chicken market, was simply trying to eliminate one of its competitors. Of course -- of course! -- none of this is true.

My creative liberties from the first post were -- ahem -- "clarified" here. Again, to be perfectly clear, there is no evidence of any ill will amongst the three establishments noted above, and there's certainly no evidence of any tomfoolery regarding the circumstances of the fire at Ogalo. That would just be silly.

The last installment was chronicled here, as we introduced Angelo's, the fourth entrant to the Portuguese chicken market in our neighborhood. Granted it's a bit further down the road, but it's still very much within our sphere of influence.

THE STATUS QUO

So: Ole, Ogalo, Portogali and Angelo's. Along with the three other guys in my apartment, we'd all been to each of these establishments. And the pecking order -- whether it was because of proximity to our apartment, seniority of the establishment or, more possibly, for no real rational reason -- was always just that: Ole, Ogalo, Portogali and Angelo's. And we lived every day, every week, every month with this unfounded hierarchy in our minds. It went unquestioned.

But one day, sometime shortly after Angelo's entered into our conscious, it went questioned. Why do we go to Ole and don't give Portogali any chance? Yes, Angelo's is more expensive, but maybe the food is that much better? Since the fire, has Ogalo changed for the better or worse? And, the kicker: Shouldn't we find out? We were faced, in essence, with Neo's choice from The Matrix: the blue pill or the red pill? Blissful ignorance or stark, unforgiving reality? We took the red pill. And that rabbit-hole, my friends... that rabbit-hole goes DEEP.

THE PROPOSAL

A blind taste test, pitting food from each of the four establishments, was agreed upon. But first, we had to iron out some details:

Name of contest: This actually came quite easily and naturally. We live on Ascot Street and often refer to our apartment as The Ascot. So clearly, "Ascot" had to be a part of the name. But we also wanted something that sounded Portuguese. And without much thought, the name Ascoto's was proposed, which we all agreed worked quite well. Just to do our due diligence, I came up with a few other ideas -- Ascotogali's and Ascotogalo's -- but the original name still stood, as it was the shortest and sweetest.

Food item: What kind of burger should we judge? And should we get it with or without chilli, a preferred add-on by all members of The Ascot? And what about chips? Should those be judged as well? In the end, it was determined that we'd judge each establishment's regular chicken burger, with chilli. But no chips. Keep it nice and simple.

Criteria: It was agreed that we'd judge each establishment and its burger on a variety of factors, each on a scale from 1 to 10, with taste being the overriding component. These were broken down as follows, with weighting for each criterion noted in parentheses: taste (70%), appearance (10%), price (5%), ambiance (5%), service (5%) and speed (5%). So taste would clearly trump all, but if a tiebreaker was needed, the other elements could tip the balance.

Prize: For one full month, we would provide the winner with our exclusive Portuguese chicken allegiance and patronage. And, of course, we'd provide our unwavering endorsement to any and all people who asked. We'd become evangelicals, if you will. (There's also been talk of presenting a trophy or plaque to the winning establishment, although I doubt we'll ever get around to that.)

THE DAY
January 18, 2009

Everything would change.

The four members of The Ascot convened, and we drew names out of a hat to see who would go to each establishment. The draw ended with the following assignments:

AG Klein (aka Andy, aka Akka, aka Klein) – Ole
M Sathiyamoorthy (aka Maz, aka Mayuran, aka Sathy) – Portogali
AP Davis (aka Alex, aka Yogi, aka Fats) – Ogalo
PF Short (aka Pete, aka Shorty, aka Francois) – Angelo's

For us, even the simple task of doing the draw made for quite the thrilling event, especially because no one wanted to walk all the way to Angelo's. The look of disgust on Shorty's face when he drew that name cannot be described. And then he sulked. He actually sulked.

Upon completion of the draw, we synched our clocks and headed out. All walking in the same direction down the street, we first reached Ole, my establishment. I bid adieu to the other guys as they continued down the street and I headed inside. There, I was greeted fairly indifferently by the guy behind the counter. I placed my order, sat down, and looked around to get a sense of ambiance. Now, as I've said, Ole has generally been our establishment of choice. It's close, it's fast, it's easy. But looking around the place... WOW. It's a piece of shit!!! The walls were dirty, there was food on the ground, newspapers were strewn on tables and the back door was propped wide open, providing me with a view of the garbage stacked outside. A fine dining establishment this is not. After a few minutes, the guy behind the counter very apathetically called out my order and gave me the food without so much a "Have a nice day!" or "Thanks a lot!". Left feeling quite dissatisfied and perhaps even a bit unnerved by the whole in-store experience, I headed back to the apartment.

I reached the apartment a short eight minutes after we had all departed. Quite an impressive time. And shortly thereafter, Maz showed up. Then Yogi. And then Shorty. Which means that the "speed" criterion was in exact correlation with each establishment's distance from our apartment. Makes sense.

We took a minute to record our ratings on the four criteria that didn't take the food into account: ambiance, service, speed and price. The former two are, of course, fairly subjective, with the latter two being very objective. Here's how the scorecard looked after this round:

So before we got to the big two parts of this test, here's how things stacked up (out of a total possible score of 20):

Portogali: 14.5 points. Middle of the pack on most items, but completely unbeknownst to us, took top prize as the cheapest burger.
Ole – 13.5 points. To no one's surprise, this won for speed. Also did well on price, but took a beating on ambiance and service.
Ogalo – 11.5 points. Middle of the pack on everything.
Angelo's – 9 points. No surprises here. Took top prize for ambiance but shat the bed on price and speed. The rating for service may have also been a little lower than expected.

And then, to the really exciting part: the taste test. Each burger was placed on an identical plate in the kitchen, with the name of its corresponding establishment taped to the bottom. As the other three guys waited in the living room, I shuffled the plates around so that we didn't know what was what. Shorty then went into the kitchen and sliced each burger into quarters. And finally, Yogi went into the kitchen and randomly picked one of the four burgers to bring out first.*

*There's no perfect place to make this admission, so I'll just do it here: I fully comprehend and acknowledge how ridiculously lame and absurd this entire exercise may appear to most people. I get it. You don't need to make me any more aware than I already am. But you know what? I don't care. It was awesome. I can't remember the last time I had such a fun and fulfilling afternoon.

Okay... back to the taste test!

We viewed Burger #1 to rate on appearance. Then we ate in silence. For there was to be no table talk here, no opportunity to bias the other judges.

We noted our ratings on our scorecards, Yogi cleansed his palate by gargling and spitting out water, and we then moved on to Burger #2, where we repeated the above process. And then again with the third and final burgers.

After completing the last burger, we tallied up the scores (still not knowing where each burger was from), averaged them out, and had a bit of a constructive dialogue. We all had our favorites, we all had our least favorites. And for the most part, we were in agreement. Following are the average point totals on taste and appearance for each burger (out of a total possible score of 80) and some of the group's collective thoughts:

Burger #1: 60.5 points. This scored highly for three of us (with two giving it their highest rating), as it had a great spice and taste. Yogi was the only dissenter here. Appearance-wise, it was mediocre.
Burger #2: 50.75 points. Generally average scores from all; certainly no one was gushing about it. However, it did very well on appearance. (It should also be noted that based on appearance, we all clearly knew that this burger was from Angelo's. While the other three burgers looked almost identical -- and we honestly didn't know where each was from -- this one clearly stood out like a sore thumb.)
Burger #3: 56.5 points. No real consistency here from the group, as it received taste scores of 5, 7, 8 and 9. I was the vote for 9; this was my favorite burger, as it had a nice spicy, creamy sauce. This burger also received the worst scores on appearance.
Burger #4: 52 points. No one was overwhelmed by this burger. While everyone agreed that the quality of the chicken may have been the best of any of the burgers, it lacked in taste and spice. Appearance scores were also relatively average.

So! Burger #1 finished first on taste and appearance, followed by burgers 3, 4 and 2. But which restaurant was each burger from? It was time for the unveiling.

We decided to go from last place to first. So Yogi first picked up the plate for Burger #2 to reveal Angelo's. As mentioned above, this came as no surprise to us. (What I thought was a bit of a surprise, however, was how dissatisfied we all were with the burger. Surely such an expensive burger would perform better! I guess not.)

We then moved on to unveil the third place burger, Burger #4. No one was ready for what was about to happen, for it... would... change... everything. EVERYTHING. Yogi picked up the plate:

Ole! Ole! OLLLLLEEEEEEE!!!!!! Holy crap!!! We honestly couldn't believe it. Our Portuguese chicken restaurant of choice for all these months/years had finished third in voting!!! THIRD!!! In case you couldn't tell from the above video, we were shocked, bewildered, astonished, dismayed, flabbergasted. Our lives would never be the same.

From what I can remember from the next few minutes, things were fairly ballistic. Shorty went into a corner and curled up into the fetal position. I blacked out and have been told that I killed a man with a trident. Yogi started hyperventilating into a paper bag. I think Maz may have even vomited.

But then we snapped out of it. We had come too far. We had to keep our composure. So we regrouped, had a group prayer and moved on. And now that we were down to two burgers -- from Ogalo and Portogali -- we decided to reveal the first place burger next, Burger #1. We honestly had no idea what to expect. Here's how it unfolded:

Unbelievable. Portogali won on taste/appearance! PORTOGALI!! Who would have thought it! The black sheep for all this time, and it easily won! We were all stunned.

And when we added up all the scores for each of the six criteria (click here for full tally of the voting), Portogali still stood on top, followed by Ogalo, Ole and Angelo's.

PORTOGALI! Winner of the first ever Ascoto's. Amazing.

THE FALLOUT

One person who didn't find this amazing at all, however, was Yogi. For he gave the Portogali burger a 5 on taste and would now have to get all his Portuguese chicken burgers from there, and only there, for the next month. Watch his reaction in the above video. He was shattered.*

*Ironically enough, Yogi was actually the first person to go to Portogali after the Ascoto's. And he's been back several times since. Guess he got over that one pretty quickly!

Yogi wasn't the only person who was shocked and dismayed by this outcome. Other members of the community couldn't believe what we had done. Nugget, a previous member of The Ascot and currently living in Canada, expressed his severe disapproval via Facebook. Joe, upon seeing the scorebook, threw it away in disgust. And so on and so forth.

We took the red pill and opened our eyes to a whole new world order. Was it what we expected? No. Was it without shock or disappointment? No. But it's the truth. It's the stark, unforgiving reality. It's the latest chapter in the Portuguese Chicken Wars.

AK All Day Face: The unloved one

2009-01-28T14:12:00.000+11:00

The unloved one (photo: AGK)

There's Wimbledon. There's the French. There's the US.

And then, grouped with the other three, yet often relegated to the periphery, there's the Aussie.

It's equal to its counterparts! It deserves -- nay, it demands -- respect. Yet it doesn't always get it, not even from some Aussies. I've often heard Aussies self-deprecatingly question how their own country ever ended up with a Grand Slam tournament, as if it doesn't deserve it.

Don't question it. Just love it.

The vitals
Title: The unloved one
Subject: AK
Face: The pain
Location: Melbourne VIC

I could get used to this

2009-01-27T04:39:00.000+11:00

No movement on the job front. Things are still very much in limbo as I inch towards my date of deportation.*

But. BUT! The weather this past week has been amazing. Hot and sunny every day.** So I've been taking advantage, with trips to various beaches, barbecues and other excursions. I can't complain.

*From here on out, let's simpy refer to this day as "DOD".

**Maybe it did get a little TOO hot the other day when it hit 42ºC (108ºF) during the day and that night was the hottest in Sydney in 12 years. Then again, with temperatures reaching ridiculous lows in the US right now, I really can't and don't want to complain. I'll take this over that any day of the week.

To up the ante, today is Australia Day, and we're celebrating by hosting a barbecue at our apartment, listening to an annual Top 100 music countdown, and switching back and forth between cricket and tennis on the TV.

Yup. I can definitely get used to this.

Unsure about my own future

2009-01-22T13:53:00.000+11:00

The hammer has dropped -- I've officially been let go from my agency.

Yesterday I wrote about how I was excited for the future of my country. And now, after somehow waking up at 4 this morning -- still quite drunk from last night -- to watch the inauguration festivities, I might be even more excited for the future of the US.

For my own personal future, however, "excited" very much does not apply to my current mindset. And "unsure" might be the kindest and perhaps most incomplete way to sum it up.

I knew this was coming; it wasn't a surprise. But when I was actually called into a room with HR, yeah, it was still a kick in the gut. About ten of us were let go, and that's never going to be pleasant.

What now? Well, pretty much exactly what I've been doing for the last three months: lots and lots of looking, cold calls, informational interviews, etc. Only difference is that now, I'll be doing it from the comfort of my apartment. But today, and maybe for the rest of this week (which will segue quite nicely into a long Australia Day Weekend), I'll be taking it relatively easy, sleeping in, going for some long jogs, taking some jaunts to the beach. Might as well make the best of a very unsure situation.

Excited for the future of my country

2009-01-21T08:26:00.001+11:00

Big personal update to come tomorrow. Without giving too much away, I can very much say that my current excitement level -- as suggested by this post's title and to be explained below -- extends only to where my country is headed. I'd do a post on that now, but I already had this one drafted. And unless I post it today, it'll be dated, so here it is!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sometime in late 1996 or early 1997, just after Bill Clinton had been re-elected, Chris Rock hosted Saturday Night Live. I don't remember the entirety of his opening monologue, but for whatever reason, I vividly recall Rock questioning just how much life would change if your guy was or wasn't elected as president. Something like, "My guy lost? Damn! Trash won't get picked up this Tuesday!" Obviously, it was in the name of comedy, and obviously, on such a superficial level, it's absolutely true -- a president can only impact our daily lives so much.

But then there's Tuesday. (Or my Wednesday.) And even though I'm 9,761 miles and a 214-day walk (and kayak) away from the festivities, I'm still quite excited for the inauguration of our 44th president. And that's not wholly because I support most of his policies or admire his willingness and desire to work across party lines or think that he's a genuinely good guy. Those all go into the equation, yes. But what I'm really excited about is much more simple than that; he just seems to get it. He knows what he knows, he knows what he doesn't know and he's not afraid to admit it. He's just a normal guy who has worked hard and paid his dues throughout his career, loves playing basketball with his friends, and is going to make someone pry his Blackberry from his Greg Focker-like kung-fu grip.

On that last point of the Blackberry, the appeal for me isn't his apparent addiction, although that absolutely makes him out to be all the more normal and relatable. No -- what's so appealing to me is why he wants to keep it:

It's just one tool among a number of tools that I'm trying to use, to break out of the bubble, to make sure that people can still reach me. If I'm doing something stupid, somebody in Chicago can send me an email and say, 'What are you doing?' I want to be able to have voices, other than the people who are immediately working for me, be able to reach out and send me a message about what's happening in America.

How many leaders -- whether it be of a country, a corporation or some little neighborhood group -- have the humility to say something like that?

Barack Obama has inherited one seriously messed up situation. Yes, the trash will still be picked up on Tuesday. But with him now at the helm, I'm optimistic for so much more than that, confident that he has the knowledge, tools and temperament to right the larger ship. So for the first time in my adult life -- at a time when I'm surrounded by many people skeptical of the United States -- I can finally and thankfully say that I'm proud of and have faith in my government.

PCW: Enter Angelo's

2009-01-19T11:12:00.000+11:00

First there was Ole and Ogalo. Then there was Portogali. Then Ogalo went away for a while. Then Ogalo came back. And now... now Angelo's enters.

A month or two ago, a few friends and I made our maiden trip to Angelo's. As you may recall from my last post on the Portuguese Chicken Wars, Angelo's is taking a new tact in the ever expanding Portuguese Chicken market in Kensington. For instead of your basic over-the-plate offerings of fast food Portuguese Chicken, Angelo's has gone classy on us. And I'm not talking Ron Burgundy "You stay classy, San Diego" classy, oh no. I'm talking classy classy. This is a restaurant first, with its take away operation very much secondary. So on this first trip of ours, the group decided to do the full sit down experience.* And I'm far from thrilled to say that it was a mixed bag.

*If we're being completely honest here -- and when it comes to Portuguese Chicken, have I ever led you astray?** -- this choice was forced on us more than anything else because, well, Angelo's hadn't even started to offer their take away menu yet.

**Don't answer that.

We started off with two appetizers*: garlic prawns and BBQ chorizo. Both very solid and succulent dishes, although not great value considering the small portions and price. Then we moved on to the mains. Two people had the steak, two -- myself included -- had the slow roasted lamb and one had the BBQ chicken. The lamb and chicken were both very good. The steak, on the other hand, a little bland.

*I should note here that in Australia, appetizers are actually called entrées, and entrées -- or at least as we know them in the US -- are called mains. Which, when you think about what the word "entrée" means, really makes a lot more sense.

So like I said, a mixed bag. But we all left determined to try those chicken burgers once the take away operation was up and running.

A few weekends later, we finally made our move. Shorty and I planned ahead on Saturday, so for that afternoon, I starved myself. No way was I going to go in there on anything but an empty stomach.

Three of us entered the restaurant later that night. Shorty and I ordered the Portugalia Burger, which the menu describes as follows: "Chicken breast on a sesame bun, topped with cheese, a slice of smoked chilli chicken breast, lettuce, tomato and mayo". Ummmm, does that mean there are two chicken breasts in there? And one of them is plain while the other is a smoked chilli chicken breast? Or is that just a typo? Our other friend ordered the Angelo's Burger, which is described as follows: "Chicken breast on a sesame bun, topped with pineapple, onion, a slice of smoked chilli chicken breast, egg, peri-peri, lettuce, tomato and mayo". The kitchen sink! And again, the two pieces of chicken! What is that??

To top things off, we also ordered some French fries* and some of Angelo's homemade peri-peri sauce and mayo.**

*If it hasn't been hard enough for me to start to use the term "chips" instead of "French fries", a few restaurants here actually use the latter term, which just further confuses things. It's one thing that McDonald's does this; that I can accept. But when a restaurant such as Angelo's also starts to use the term "French fries", well, that's when my head starts to spin.

**Secretly -- okay, it was no secret to any of us -- we wanted prego sauce, but we thought we should give these a try. The insane thing though is that while the fries cost $3, so did each of the sauces! That's right: the sauces cost as much as the fries. That's some wacky, wild stuff.

After ordering, we sat down and waited. And waited. And waited. And WAITED. Finally, Shorty and I got our orders. But our friend's burger was nowhere in sight. And it would stay that way for another ten minutes or so, at which point my stomach was imploding, my burger was going cold and my fries had gone soggy from the steam in the plastic bag. Faaaaaantastic.

Eventually, mercifully, our friend got his burger, we rushed back to our apartment and the true test began. But our impressions of those burgers... well, that's going to have to wait for another day. Because some events transpired just today that have brought the Portuguese Chicken Wars to a whole new level. And it absolutely requires a post of its own.

Haydos and televising Twenty20 cricket

2009-01-17T08:33:00.000+11:00

I know the readership of this blog, and given the title of this post, you're probably groaning. (Or have already moved on to a different website.) So I promise to keep this short.*

*Okay, in retrospect, it didn't quite work out that way. But I think this still makes for a (somewhat) interesting read.

First. On Tuesday, Matthew Hayden (nicknamed Haydos) retired from representing the Australian cricket team. Considered one of the greatest batsmen in Australian cricket history, he was the first player to capture my attention when I came here 16 months ago. In fact, when I went to Day 4 of the Sydney Test match between Australia and India early last year, he scored his 29th Test century. I know that means nothing to most of you. But believe me -- it's impressive.*

*Ultimately, he ended with 30 Test centuries, which places him sixth on the all time list.

Haydos has been part of my cricket consciousness for just over a year. And I'll still miss him.

Second. The South African team is currently touring Australia, with the two countries squaring off in a series of matches. First were the three Test matches, which the underdog Proteas* surprisingly won, 2-1. Then came the Twenty20 matches, which Australia won, 2-0.

*This is the nickname of the South African cricket team. I have no idea what its origins are or what it means.

I'll save the lesson on Test cricket versus Twenty20 cricket versus One Day Internationals for another day. (Or probably never.) For the purposes of this conversation, however, let's use a bit of an analogy; you know, like an SAT question. Test cricket is to Twenty20 cricket as Walter Cronkite is to Bart Simpson* (with the One Day Internationals falling somewhere in between). Or perhaps more aptly, Test cricket is the NFL and Twenty20 is the XFL.

In other words -- because let's be honest, a master of analogies I am not -- Test cricket stands for tradition, for history, for days when men were gentlemen, for plain, white uniforms. Twenty20 cricket, on the other hand, is the new, exciting, irreverent kid on the block, white uniforms be damned. The same etiquette and rules of engagement very much do not apply.

*Not sure how well Bart Simpson works in this analogy, but that's the best I could come up with in the two minutes I was willing to devote to it. Other ideas: Charlie Sheen? (He's too old, right? Although I guess in a sense, Bart Simpson is as well.) Matt Stone and Trey Parker? (You can't use two people, right? But you also can't separate those two guys; they have to appear with each other, like peanut butter and jelly, Batman and Robin, Charlie Sheen and brothels.) Nick Cannon? Conan O'Brien? Paris Hilton???? (Okay, I've officially derailed here.)

I don't know, this was a serious brain fart on my part. Or, perhaps more likely, it's a frightening indicator that I'm disgustingly out of touch with American culture. So if you have a better example, by all means, please make a suggestion in the comments.

One of the greatest disparities between these two versions -- and to get right to the point, what I want to focus on here -- is how they're televised. Test cricket, being so steeped in tradition, is presented in a very straightforward, stodgy sort of fashion. No gimmicks. With Twenty20, however, nothing is sacred. The sky's the limit. In India's new India Premier League, for example, each team has freaking cheerleaders! Imagine your favorite baseball team bringing some of those out on the field. Jack Buck would be rolling over in his grave.

What I especially love about Twenty20's telecasts is that they sometimes have players miked up to talk to the broadcast booth during the game. So the announcers are doing some play-by-play or analysis or whatever, and then they send it down to a player and talk to them AS THE MATCH IS HAPPENING! Why do you have the field positioned in such a manner? How do you plan to bowl to this guy? What went wrong with that last ball? How freaking cool is that??!?

I would love to see a sports league in the US experiment with this. Maybe it isn't very feasible for basketball, with its constant and fluid action, but in football and baseball (like in cricket), there are relatively lengthy breaks in between each play that lend themselves perfectly to such situations. The insights that I've gained by listening to players as a match is happening have been invaluable. And I think that we could also learn many things from a pitcher, a quarterback or even a golfer.

If this were ever to be seriously considered in the US, many would question how it might damage the sanctity of sports, and I'd absolutely understand, respect and empathize with that opinion. But I'd still very much welcome the debate and think that it should be had. Because miking up players has the potential to revolutionize sports. The game becomes more accessible. Athletes become more relatable. It all becomes more interesting. And that's something that I think we -- the fans, the players, the owners, the TV networks -- would all welcome.

I’m Twittering... because I’m in Rome?

2009-01-15T08:18:00.002+11:00

Veronica Corningstone: But it's very important to me that I be viewed as a professional.
Ron Burgundy: Right. When in Rome. Hmm.
Veronica: Yeah. That, uh, expression doesn't really apply to what I'm talking about.
Ron: Oh. Oh, I'm--
Veronica: What I was saying.
Ron: I still don't quite understand what it means.
Veronica: Oh, no. You'll find it.

Throughout Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Ron Burgundy could never grasp the concept of the phrase, "When in Rome". The idea eluded him, was foreign to him, he simply couldn't connect the dots. And so despite his best efforts, he was never able to master how and when to use it.

For the last year or two, this has been my attitude towards Twitter. I got it... but I didn't get it at all. What purpose did it serve? Did it offer any value? When would I use it? Why would I use it?

To these questions, I still don't have an answer. But like Burgundy, I've decided to dive in head first and hope for the best.

You can view and follow my Twitter feed here or simply follow my updates on the sidebar of this blog, buried underneath the "What is AK All Day?" section.* Maybe one day, like Ron, I’ll find it.

*If I'm really going to make a concerted effort to become a reputable member of Twitter Nation, this clearly needs to be more prominent on the blog's layout, which -- irrespective of this -- has remained stagnant for far too long. So after the 17 months with the same template, I may be looking to mix things up here in the coming days or weeks. You may have noticed a change in the width of the margins; hopefully I can muster a little more than that sooner or later.

I need a backiotomy

2009-01-14T09:20:00.001+11:00

Or at least that's what Sir-Smoke-Alot would probably tell me. Because right now, my back is killing me.

Twice during college, my back freaked out and went into spasms. I remember both times vividly:

Sophomore year. While talking to a TA after a lecture, I innocently reached down to pick up my backpack. As I lifted it up, my back seized up and screamed out, "NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!" I practically had to crawl back to my apartment.
Senior year. At my job as a valet parker, I dropped some keys and simply reached down to pick them up. And again, even with such a simple motion, my back would have none of it. Somehow, someway, I made it through the rest of my shift, whimpering in pain each time I stepped into and out of a car.

Both times, I spent the majority of the next week popping pain killers and muscle relaxers like they were Skittles and lying on hard surfaces, wherever I could find one. Bless my parents for passing on the "shit back" gene.

So ever since then, I've fairly religiously stretched out my back at least once a day. And it clearly has worked, for I'd never again experienced anything to the same degree... until Saturday morning. For playing in the field during a cricket match, a ball was hit in my direction. I chased it down, and as I bent over to pick it up, well, if you don’t see where this is going...

That was three days ago. And today, I'm still hobbling around, hunched over like an 80-year-old man. It stinks.

2009: A big, fat question mark

2009-01-09T03:50:00.000+11:00

So. We recapped the end of 2008 here. Last year is over. Time to move on, turn the page and look forward to 2009.

And what's in store for the upcoming year? Hmmm. Yeah. Well. To that question, I have absolutely no answer.

Three months removed from finding out that my agency is losing the one account that I work(ed) on, my job situation is still up in the air. I'm still with the same agency, but it's only a matter of time -- for all I know, just a matter of hours -- before I get the old heave ho. So I'm still looking for work elsewhere. Clearly with very little luck. It is the economy, stupid.

Beyond work, what's in store? Well, I honestly can't say, because it really does all hinge on the job. If I find one before being let go, it's smooth sailing, and I continue this adventure here. But if I get the pink slip first, well, that's when it gets interesting. Because at that point, the Australian government will start a 28-day countdown for me to find a new company to sponsor my visa. And if I don't, I get The Boot.

There's still a lot I want to do here. TONS. I'm not at all ready to leave. So I'm fairly determined to not let the job situation dictate that. Of course, it will very much have to dictate what I do here. Because if I'm not working, well, I have to be doing something, right? And I think that something will be travel. For while I've now done the entire East Coast of this continent, there's still quite a bit left to see: Adelaide, Perth, Darwin, Uluru and many, many spots in between. And before I go back to the US -- whenever that may be -- I'm determined to see all of it.

Of course, getting a new job is still the ideal scenario, as it would allow me to stay longer and save more money for said travel, which would have to be put on hold. And I'd be more than happy to do that.

I don't have a clue how this is all going to pan out. But I'll be sure to let you know as soon as I do.