Partying like it's 2008

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!

Linkin' to some Kleinballs

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.

Melbourne -- there's an angle in here somewhere

I've just yet to find it.

You'd think there'd be some way I could cleverly sum up my trip in a title for this post, some way for me to approach my recap, but I'm at a loss. So simply stated, I went to Melbourne last weekend, and it was awesome. Hmmmm, maybe that's it? "Melbourne -- it was awesome!"

But that would be quite a simplistic look at the weekend. For there's no way that all 72 hours of a three-day weekend can be awesome, right? And that can certainly be said of the 72 hours I spent there last weekend. For while I had my fair share of awesomeness, some things were only kind of awesome, and others were not awesome at all. (I feel like Jeff Spicoli would be beaming with pride at these words.)

So let's try that approach.

Melbourne -- the awesome, the kind of awesome and the not so awesome

The Awesome

Weather. So this is what summer's like, eh? You know, when it comes to the Sydney vs. Melbourne, the weather debate is generally ceded to Sydney. Sydney's supposed to be the warm city, Sydney's supposed to afford you year-round opportunities to go to the beach, Sydney's supposed to leave you sunburned after every weekend. But after countless consecutive days of rain in Sydney, it took this trip to get this month's fill of Vitamin D. Honestly, what glorious, glorious weather. Thirty degrees (Celsius, that is) and sunny every day. What a novel concept.

Melbourne Cricket Ground. The most hallowed of sporting venues in Australia, this place holds over 100,000 people. And since I've started to get into cricket, Maz and I did a tour. Did you know that the biggest crowd ever to watch a baseball game was at the MCG? Yup, something like 104,000, during the 1956 Olympics. The only time that record may ever fall? Right back at the MCG, if baseball has an Opening Day there, as I've been told is a possibility.

Trams. They weren't awesome because they were more efficient than other forms of public transportation, but damn, the trams in Melbourne are cool. I've lived in two cities (Philly and Boston) with some semblance of a tram system, but that's just what they are -- a mere semblance of a tram system. Melbourne's tram system, on the other hand, just oozes with nostalgia. Just walking down the street, hearing the bells on the trams as they passed, added a very cool and unique je ne sais quoi to the whole experience. I'm really not familiar with San Francisco or Houston, so maybe their trams can match this, but I somehow doubt it.

The laneways. Much of the center of Melbourne is dominated with wide boulevards lined with chain stores. (See "The Kind of Awesome" section below for more on the chains.) But throughout the city, darting off of these boulevards, are these tiny little streets, called laneways. Generally just the width of one car, these laneways have taken up a culture unto themselves and are populated with really cool restaurants, bars and boutiques. So if I ever needed a respite from the city, all I had to do was walk down one of these laneways, stop in a coffee shop or bakery and hang out for a bit. Two awesome thumbs up.

Federation Square. Just a really cool -- I mean, awesome -- complex, right on the Yarra River. Seems like there's always something going on -- there was a sustainability festival there last weekend and an outdoor film to be shown on Sunday night -- and plenty of bars and restaurants to boot. And it's right across the street from Flinders Station, another old school feature to the city, and a really nice, big church.

Eureka Tower. Tallest residential building in the world. Highest public vantage point in the Southern Hemisphere. Fastest lifts -- ahem, elevators -- in the Southern Hemisphere. (Living in Australia for any period of time, you'll quickly learn that it's quite easy to have the biggest/tallest/fastest/etc anything in the Southern Hemisphere. It's like being Ms. Rhode Island or something.) And, obviously, a fantastic view. Needless to say: awesome.

The Kind of Awesome

Food. This could really be split among all the categories, but as a whole, it was merely okay. Which was actually a bit of a disappointment. Take Friday, for example. Breakfast at Mario's (recommended by the Wallpaper guide book -- more on this in a second) was okay, lunch at Gertrude Street Enoteca (also recommended by Wallpaper) was fantastic and dinner at some random Italian place I chanced upon was crap. Then again, the next day, the mushroom, cheese and spinach crepe that I had in the morning, the muffin that I had as a snack and the chili sausage that I had for dinner were all quite good. And in what was an absolutely shocking and bewildering find, the Ultimate Blended Mocha that I had at Coffee Bean was (obviously) outstanding.* So barring some swings and misses on Friday, maybe the food deserves better than "The Kind of Awesome" grouping after all.

*The whole asterisk thing from my last entry gave me a headache so I thought I'd abandon it, but if anything deserves a bit of a tangent, it's this. So let's recap. I was in Melbourne. And I found a Coffee Bean. To put this in proper perspective, I would have been shocked enough if I chanced upon a Coffee Bean in Melbourne, Florida. But in case any clarification is needed, this was Melbourne, Australia. Thousands and thousands of miles away from what I ever imagined was the closest Coffee Bean. Seriously, do any other Coffee Beans even exist outside of Southern California? (About two seconds of research would answer this question, but it's more fun to continue to be ignorant on the issue.) And there's one in frickin' Melbourne??!? And lest you think it was a knockoff of the real thing, believe me, it wasn't. Same menu, same logo, same taste. Unbelievable. For a good six minutes before I went in, I probably stood on the sidewalk, gaping at the storefront and wondering if I was tripping on some drugs that I had unknowingly taken the previous night.

Subway* and 7-Eleven. I have never seen more of either of any chain store in such a small area as the Subways and 7-Elevens in Melbourne.** Honestly, there'd be a Subway on one block, then a 7-Eleven on the next. And I can't decide if this is a good thing or not. I mean, yeah, they're evil corporations taking over the world... but the convenience! Anyway, exactly how pervasive were they? Take a look at the picture to the left. That's part of Federation Square, which as discussed above, is considered one of Melbourne's icons. That storefront at the bottom of what's a culturally significant building? A 7-Eleven!

*Since arriving in Australia in September, I had not eaten at a Subway. For those that know me, this is quite a development, because I love Subway. Love it. If Lonely Planet is my marijuana and maps are my heroin (if you're not following me here, check out my previous post) then Subway... my God, I don't even want to know. But for some reason, since I've been here, I've stayed away. I think that's partly because I've been trying to eat healthier, and although a typical fast food restaurant Subway is not, and they at least claim to be healthy, I've resisted. But then Thursday night at the airport happened, when I gave in and scarfed down a foot-long Italian BMT. And then Monday night happened. And now I fear that I'm on the edge and may black out, come to a month later and realize that I've eaten Subway three times a day every single. And if you don't think that could happen (or that I'd be up to the challenge, a la Super Size Me), then you don't know me.

**Possible exception here, if you wanted to count a small area within a city, would be the two Starbucks across the street from each other in Astor Place.

Booze. When Maz got back to the city on Saturday afternoon, we got right to it. Several beers at his place, several more at Federation Square (from where we made a drunk dial to a friend... at 8pm!), then a giant pitcher of Pimms and lemonade and then, ummmm... and then, ummmmm... well, that's really all I can remember. There were other drinks, yes, but things start to get a little hazy after our pitcher of Pimms at Madame Brussels. (What a great name.) So I called it a night a bit early. Meanwhile, Maz and another friend stayed out, and to my horror, I woke up at 7am to 15 missed calls from Maz. That's right, I passed out in the apartment with Maz's keys, and despite 15 calls to me and many more buzzes to the apartment, I was out cold. And Maz was shit out of luck. Oops!

Casino. Got to Maz's apartment at 11pm on Thursday night, and shortly thereafter, we headed to the casino. We sit down at a blackjack table and immediately drop $50. We move over to a three card poker table and drop $50 more. We split up for a bit and I start with another $50 on what might be the worst blackjack table ever. I really don't like to be a snob about it, but everything you might hate about blackjack, this table had. People coming and going. Dealers coming and going. And worst of all, people not knowing how to play.* So why did I stay at the table, you ask? Well, despite it all, I was winning. But honestly, I hated every second of it. And was actually pleased when I went on a mini losing streak and had an excuse to get up and walk away.

*In particular, there was one guy who was doubling down and splitting just for the sake of it. So regardless of the situation, if he had any pairs, he would always split. And the icing on the cake was when he split two sixes against the dealer's 10. I'll never forget it.

Virgin Blue. It's Thursday afternoon, and I'm in a cab heading to a client meeting. My phone rings. It's the airline I'm flying to Melbourne, Virgin Blue: "Hello sir, I'm calling to tell you that your 8:30 flight tonight has been cancelled." FUCK! My heart hits the floor. My weekend is ruined. Are there any more flights this weekend??? The rep continues: "How would you like to get on the flight scheduled before that, at 8:15?" Uhhhh, you have a flight with open seats that leaves only 15 minutes earlier? Wow, that's not so bad. But I was quite busy at work that day, so I ask what's the next scheduled flight to leave after my originally scheduled 8:30 flight. "There's an 8:45." Uhhhh, so on top of your flight with open seats that leaves only 15 minutes earlier, you have a flight with open seats that leaves only 15 minutes later? That's fantastic!* I reschedule for that and my experiences with Virgin Blue for the rest of the weekend are awesome.

*If Virgin Blue did one of those Southwest-type commercials, where they just scroll through all the flights that they have for a route (say, LA to San Fran) in a given day, the version of that commercial for the Sydney to Melbourne route** would last two minutes. Amazing.

**Dammit, really didn't want to do all these asterisks. Anyway, did you know that the Sydney to Melbourne route is the fourth most flown route in the world (851 flights per week), after Barcelona-Madrid (971 flights per week), Sao Paulo-Rio (894) and Jeju-Seoul (858)? The most flown route in the US? You'd never guess it, although it makes perfect sense when you think about it: Honolulu-Kahului (639 flights per week).

The Not So Awesome

Phaidon's Wallpaper. Ahhhh, the guide book that I had so many doubts about. Let me quote myself:

Of course, there are downsides. The amount of information is limited. That means they have to hit a home run on just about every recommendation. And of even more concern is the map situation. For the good folks at Phaidon decided that one simple map of the city, on one of their tiny spreads within the book, would be sufficient. And for me, that's a problem. Where's the detail? Does this map really include all streets? And what lies beyond the end of the page??!? What's out there??!? The uncertainty is enough to give me an anxiety attack.

Both of my perceived downsides became reality. A home run on every recommendation, they did not hit. Maybe I'm being a little too hard on the book, because it certainly did steer me in some good directions, but the limited amount of info proved to be, well, too limited. And the map... yikes. Not only was it tiny and not only did it not include many major portions of or major streets in the city, but I quickly discovered that it was situated with West at the top of the page and North to the left!!! What the hell??!?

Maybe I'm being too hard on Wallpaper. It did introduce me to some great places. And it is mind-boggling beautiful to look at. But if the second best thing you can say about a guide book is that it's mind-boggling beautiful to look at, I think that should throw up some red flags.

Drunk food. This is really a problem endemic to all of Australia. The quantity and quality of late night greasy food is appalling. And if you chance upon some pizza, don't even think about it. My God. Stick with the chips -- ahem, fries -- and be happy with them. Melbourne was no different here.

Hangover. This was on Sunday. I don't think any further explanation necessary.

All in all, a really great trip. Which, despite the guide book's failings was not surprising. For just as I said in my last post, while I had concerns about the book, I was sure I'd still have a great time. And I did. Overall, it was (in case you couldn't tell) awesome. But three days wasn't enough. So the next time I have a friend whose company is putting them up in a perfect location in Melbourne and I find super cheap tickets, I'll be back there. And you'll get to hear about all of it again, in excruciatingly long detail.