Here comes the madness

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.

The quest for a six

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.

Home brew: it gives my life meaning!

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.

I could get used to this

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.