Sunday, March 11, 2012

Introducing Tasmania


Visiting Government House

First things first: Tasmania is NOT a foreign country floating somewhere in the Andaman Sea. It is the island state of Australia at the country’s most southern point. Actually, it’s a collection of islands much like Hawaii but that’s where the similarity ends. There is nothing tropical about the weather at this last stop before the Antarctica. It is entirely more like Wisconsin or Michigan in weather . The western 37% of Tasmania is reserve land, mountainous and snowbound in the winter.

Most of its half million people reside in the eastern and northern part of the state. An interesting bunch, this lot. Almost everyone is related to a crook. Tasmania was settled by the British as a penal colony, and where this was once a fact to be hidden, most people today embrace their … colorful … ancestry. There is a lot free spirit found here in the form of ageing hippies and their organic produce and earth friendly products. Despite the rumors you’ll hear on the mainland, no one in Tasmania has two heads (a not-so-veiled hint at small island inbreeding.) The state seems to be losing heads to the mainland anyway. Unemployment in Tassie is the highest in the country. The apple, beer (Cascade and Boag) , cheese (King Island cheese & beef is second to none!) and tourism industry cannot make this beautiful state more attractive to young workers and industries that would employ them. Retirees, however, find this a most suitable place.


Oatlands

Another misconception to correct is the Tasmanian Devil. Warner Brothers got the strong jaw and irritable temper correct but the rest is a bit fanciful. The Tassie devil is small, black with a white collar. It is also suffering from a facial tumor that has been spreading like wildfire for 15 years now. Conservation and breeding programs on the mainland (where devils are not found in the wild) are a high priority for the residents of the state. Unfortunately, this has also brought out bogus organizations looking to capitalize on people’s concern and generosity. Also capturing the natives’ fancy is the Tasmanian Tiger—more of a canine with stripes and huge mouth than a big cat. The last Tassie Tiger is said to have died in 1936 but tragics still hold out hope that their sightings and scat collections will resurrect the state emblem. Just as a matter of interest for all of you wombat fans, wombats poop perfectly square bricks so identifying their scat is easy enough.

Some famous Tasmanians: actor Errol Flynn, actor Simon Baker (from “The Mentalist”) and Crown Princess Mary of Denmark who met her handsome prince during the Sydney Olympics.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

PIAF - The Writer's Festival 2012

You and I have been waiting a whole year for the return of the magic that is the Perth International Arts Festival. Every possible branch of the Arts is represented here in classic to downright...eclectic...form. My favorite part is the Writer's Festival, a long weekend of speakers and presentations of interest to anyone who has ever read a book. The matrix scheduling, variety of topics and quality of guests leaves the attending public fairly panting with excitement each hour.

"Panting" doesn't really describe the reaction to a new offering this year called The Pitch. Twenty lucky people were going to get three minutes to pitch their story ideas to a local publisher to get feedback or (hold your breath) a nibble. I was ninth in line. It all sounded like a fabulous game show and I wanted in because I know I can make an impressive presentation. Pity I didn't have a finished or near-finished book in hand like most of my fellow line-waiters. What am I doing here? I started to get nervous but not about the pitch. Better showman than writer am I. No, I was afraid the 21st person in line -who had a manuscript and experience pitching it to several agents and publishers already- would thump me one out in the hallway afterwards for killing off their chance with my fancy.

Yeah well, they should have gotten here sooner I decided and resolved to squeeze in two story ideas. One was based on a real-life gypsy singer (a tale that has been rattling around in my head since 1996) and the other winner was to turn this blog into a book. I was so ready when my name was finally called. Cue the dramatic music:

Vara Panina. A gypsy singer celebrated by Imperial Russian society. A voice so captivating that world renown jeweler Carl Faberge immortalized her in statuette ... celebrated by but not accepted into Society ... alienated by her own community ... unrequited love ... died young. Alas, a tragedy not a fairytale.

.....................but while I still have some time left, let me go autobiographical. Forget everything you've read by Bill Bryson ... get a picture of expat life a few pixels at a time a la Erma Bombeck...

The truth is I have never considered Vara as anything other than a screenplay and said almost as much. "Vara I can see as a lushly produced movie running behind my eyeballs, but with Postcards From OZ you can taste the Vegemite!" High drama in place of finished manuscript with loads of industry cred. The publisher, Terri-ann White, at this point usually asks the writer a few questions like: "What is this story similar to?" (The Great Gatsby), "Who is your target audience?" (Umm, errrr, ummm) Instead, Terri-ann turned to the audience and asked, "Who would consider buying this book?" About a quarter of the room raised their hands. This was unexpected. She recommends thorough research of the subject and injecting interest and life into the dry facts found.

As for Postcards From OZ? "Keep it on the blog and see where it goes." Ouch.

Also new this year was shifting some of the free presentations (to make space for all the extra paid sessions -- scowl) to lush groves on the beautiful college campus this was held on. In this regard, Perth's weather is ideal. More than a few bridal couples getting photos taken amongst the greenery, scenic archways and ethereal stained class had to share space with several hundred festival goers and the half dozen peacock pairs that roam the campus.

Let me share a snippet of the publicly displayed art that is part of PIAF. South Korean artist Choi Jeong Hwa, whose usual medium is mass-produced plastic items, has a couple of interesting installations about town. The colorful pyramids standing sentinel at the Supreme Court are made of fish & chip baskets. The large red lotus flower found on this campus has an oscillating fan inside giving it a happy octopus demeanor.

I'll close here with an exhortation to start saving your pennies. My new book, "VARA", is on track to be published in 2028. MSRP is $45. Autographs are free.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Australia Day 2012, Perth

    Australia Day, the commemoration of the First Fleet from Britain arriving in Australia, January 26, 1788. New citizens are sworn in, awards for citizenship handed out, a high school or community band will play. Nothing more than a day off work for the eastern states but embraced by the residents of Western Australia.
   Usually.    Today the spirit was willing but the flesh was weak. The temperature today shot up to 107F and most of us simply ducked for cover. Thursday is my radio show day and I hung out at the air conditioned radio station a whole lot longer than necessary. Licked a 50 cent soft serve ice cream cone from McDonald's while waiting for an air conditioned bus which dropped me off at the air conditioned grocery store. Did not pick up any of the traditional lamb chops for holiday grilling but did buy a bouquet of blue,white & red radishes as a show of spirit and a lime to swim in my Tanqueray & Tonic.
   Swimming.    Our property pool was closed seven weeks ago for a lack of signage. You know: depth markers, "Do Not Dive", etc. Hard to believe that these simple signs would take two months to get done and posted. Hard to believe also that the pool manager left the gate near us unlocked. Easy to believe that upon the aforementioned discovery of pool access, Kev & I went for a quick swim despite the "Pool Closed" signs. Have I mentioned the 107F heat (and we don't have air conditioning?) Fear not, we weren't noticed and the Cricket game was still on TV when we returned ten minutes later.

Fireworks. The highlight of many a celebration ...and easily seen from our balcony so we don't need to stray from home to see the big show. And a good thing there, too. Clouds from a far north storm had made it to Perth (along with Cousin Lightning Bolt) just in time for the beginning of the fireworks. Oh dear, this must have scattered people on the foreshore very quickly. I REALLY like fireworks and appreciate the music that a sponsoring local radio station provides to heighten the experience. I daresay it is an underdeveloped art here in OZ. Rousing patriotic tunes are heard in the U.S. with some shows timed to the music even. Here in Perth, the music tends to sound entirely incidental. No more patriotic than Rolf Harris' "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" with a sampling of INXS and AC/DC (What? No Wiggles tune, also?) and more likely to be Cyndi Lauper's "True Colors." And the music bed ended way before the finale. Oh well. The rain stopped as soon as the skyshow did, naturally.

Tomorrow? We're back to work. Happy Australia Day, Mates!

Monday, January 2, 2012

A Loooooooonngg Holiday Week

Well, I hate to sound like Scrooge, but after what seems like an endless holiday week, I am so ready to go back to work. It's not any one thing that brings me to distemper. I could blame my aching left knee that is affecting my mobility and smile or the fact that our car is barely functional for any but the shortest trips or the fact that we don't have air-conditioning plus a closed pool.

It's all these plus the confusion of holidays appearing on Sundays. Australians aren't about to give up a day off work because a holiday falls on Sunday, so "officially" Christmas was Monday, Boxing Day (a legal work holiday) was Tuesday with a discretionary workers holiday squeezed in on Wednesday. But wait, there's more. Another discretionary worker holiday for some branches of the government (like the post office) on Friday because some offices may open for parcel disbursement on Saturday morning. Except postal workers didn't bother to show up then, either. And New Year's Day is, of course celebrated in Governmentdom and Commercialworld on Monday the second. Never knew what would be where or when.


Picnic & family snaps

Now, if you have a working car (and I've mentioned that we currently don't) or have an advantageous postal code, you'll head to the ocean for a barbecue and a swim or head to the cool relief of the hills.

Perhaps a longer drive to the Southern Ocean-a very popular heat escaping holiday option. Of course, we indulged in some of our usual traditions: the picnic with my brother-in-laws family in gorgeous Hyde Park, trying out the new toys (Natie's first bike!) and my German smoking man and nativity given to me by my cousin Antje longer ago than I'll ever confess.

Trying out the new red bike!

Smoking man + Nativity

Well, each of us sneaked in a day of work somewhere in all this and what would Boxing Day be without out the start of the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race on TV (the whole race lasts 3-14 days) followed by the Aussie-India Cricket game (which lasts almost as long at the above yacht race.) Squeeze in some post-holiday bargain hunting, board games (which I tend to win) and increasingly less interesting DVDs and you have the sum of a 10-day holiday week.

I'm remembering not to complain. My New Year's Resolution (the first one in several years) is to be less grumpy, more grateful and blindingly optimistic. Soooooo, I am glad to be going back to work tomorrow.

Yeah, call me Ebenezer.

Saturday, December 31, 2011

Seersucker Summer

Somethings are just under-appreciated in life: your mother's hug, properly fitted shoes, a decent dictionary, coconut covered doughnuts and seersucker clothing. It's the latter that concerns me today.

This cotton fabric could be more accurately described as "puckered pinstripes" as it is a closer reflection of how it looks. Those puckers, made from a 'slack tension' weave, allows heat to rise away from the body and negate any need to iron it. Heavily associated with the warm and humid American South, you may have seen movies where simple southern women (played by Chloris Leachman) look up sappily at their husbands (played by Fred MacMurray) and drawl, "You look so han'some in your seersucker suit." You'll cringe and think, "yeah, I'll give that a miss."

Don't. It just might save your life as it is currently saving mine.

Summer came late to Perth this year but it came on strong. This week the temperatures more than flirted with triple digits. What to wear when one is melting? Those southern gents really were on to something. Time to dig out the seersucker camp shirts and shorts. As I sit here I am wearing a red plaid seersucker camp shirt and blue floursack capris. I look like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm or LIFE magazine's Miss American MidWest. I can see two other seersucker shirts and two seersucker shorts. I never knew I owned so much...or wished I owned more. And I'll never know why Aussies wear so much polyester, and close fitting poly at that, during the hottest months. Are they nuts or just unseeing to the cool chic of crinkled cotton?

So, I'm here to tell you that the next time you are browsing through a catalog or thrift store and spot some puckered plaid clothing, drop the phony southern drawl and reach for some cash. You'll be thanking me later.

I'll save you that trouble: You're Welcome.

Saturday, November 12, 2011

The Seven Day Vegetarian

Just the other day, yet another celebrity announced the opening of their high end vegan restaurant. For many people this conjures an image of a large, fancy plate decorated with artsy swirls of soy paste sauce, centered with a tiny mound of alfalfa sprouts and organic carrot shavings. The presentation is completed with a bill for $45 handed over by a skeletal, pasty-faced waiter who hasn't cracked a smile since he last peeked beneath a sesame seed bun.

It can be a hard sell for many.

I've mentioned the carnivorous Kev before: a guy whose idea of a vegetable is meat that has turned green and who can't look at a cow without imagining it between two slices of bread or a fork in it. He is one of the great cadre of meat eaters joining Henry VIII, Attila the Hun and Fred Flintstone in the Meat Eater Hall of Fame. Vegetables have their place...usually in the home of someone else.

Recently PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) announced an Eat Vegetarian for a Week campaign. Kev got excited. I got suspicious. Kev has little patience for "bleeding heart greenies whinging about animal issues they don't deal with", so why get stirred up? PETA aside, he saw this as a challenge. Could he survive a week without meat--of any color? Eventually assured of his commitment to the concept, we started planning. First step: eat all the meat currently in the fridge.

O.K. now we're ready to start. This requires careful menu planning for meals without meat or fish --he considers eating fish to be 'cheating' by those claiming to be vegetarians. Pasta, eggplant, bulgur wheat fill out his meatless imagination and cooking ability. It will be up to me to manage the rest. It is imperative that there be leftovers so he has something to take for lunch. Twenty-one meals and counting.

Truth is, Kev fared pretty well. One day I roasted a whole bunch of root vegetables plus a squash and called it supper. He completely filled up the empty space in his gut and fled the table to distract himself from the missing main entree. Weekends-where breakfast is bacon & eggs- were particularly difficult. Surprisingly, for a guy who goes through a loaf of bread about every three days, he ate very little bread. No particular reason, maybe just totally tapping into his inner ascetic. He insists that he never cheated. Not even once.


meatlover's breakfast

So, what is the upshot of the grand experiment? No grand revelations. "What's the point?" he asked. No real protein means no real energy. "Now I know why (a co-worker) walks in slow-mo all the time." he said with a dismissive wave of a hand. The other hand was busy frying up three different kinds of meat for his first post experiment meal. Not a vegetable in sight.

The Aussie Dagwood

You might ask, does Kev eat any vegetables? Yes, but only couched in the right circumstance. Like in an Aussie-style hamburger which must include slices of beets and a fried egg. [Actually, a fried egg on anything makes it "Aussie-style".] He'll also slip in a slice of tomato and onion. Looks more like a Dagwood to me. Looks like one happy eater. Bon Apetit!

Thursday, November 3, 2011

CHOGM 2011

Perth was invaded last week.

Politicians constituted one major front, met by an army of law enforcement, witnessed by thousands of celebrating citizenry and all covered in digital detail by a battalion of media. The official code name of this action? The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting or CHOGM (pronounced as a word, not a series of letters.) It is a biennial meeting of the British Commonwealth nations led by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. The voluntary congress talks about issues of mutual interest (trade, immigration, polio eradication, climate change) and individual gain (nuclear power/weapons, resource attainment, operating funds to keep the country going.) Two related forums immediately precede these foreign Heads of State meetings: the Business Conference [where the host country is likely to gain some benefit from all the hoopla] and the Young People's Conference [where 21 year-olds tell themselves that they should be running countries and companies.]

Police guard VIP hotels

So what does this mean to the citizens of Perth hosting this event this year? The added security (police brought in from all states and New Zealand) especially around the ministerial hotels guarding delegations and hovering like raptors seemed a bit much. Barricades, street closures, burly men with earwigs "magging and bagging" (magnetometer and bag check) everyone and rooftop snipers being vigilant every time the Queen surfaced gave this otherwise laidback city the look and feel of being occupied by a military force.

staff security

Even the people working the event got used to forever walking (or wheeling themselves) through ID doorways despite wearing identity tags and anti-designer shirts few felons would don to get access to third tier delegates and heavily guarded national leaders. Five hundred Perthians were needed to volunteer their time to move general citizenry and dignitaries on to where they needed to be with the least amount of disruption. Hard to believe but a thousand people applied to be goodwill ambassadors of the city for this event.

CHOGM Festival corner

Not to be totally left out of the excitement the federal government was creating, the state of Western Australia sponsored a CHOGM Festival for its citizens and visitors. Concerts, community art , Speaker's Corner, public movies, Exhibitions, performances, lectures and even international athletic competitions in netball and field hockey. Something for everyone. And most of it free.

press conference prep

So where do I fit in in all this? I was one of the volunteer force with a collective resume to match any in the corporate world. Doing two days work in the busport, I was moved up into the convention center on Saturday morning. A big press conference on the eradication of polio was being held. I had the distinct pleasure of escorting some of the participating Heads of State to the media room. First, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Gilani (not as warm and friendly as his delegate whom I found delightful) and then (drumroll, please) the Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard! The PM and I shared pleasantries about the weather and the exercise we were getting trotting from one event to another ["And still not enough." "I know what you mean."] PMs Gillard and Cameron (UK) were notable amongst the lucky few volunteers to get close to any VIPs for being warm to the insignificant people leading them around. Of course they wouldn't remember us 15 seconds after we delivered them where they needed to be but their acknowledgment of our existence was as good as recognition for a job well done.

There were plenty of detractors to this whole event (we won't mention the objectors to individual rulers) usually about the amount of money spent for so little outcome. Politicians would have us believe that all this would put Perth on the real world map. I have to agree, in part, with the negative assessment. Just about everyone paid to plan and organize CHOGM was imported from the east coast, including the lowest tier people like graphic artists, volunteer liaisons and venue managers. And those folks had to be fed and housed. Yes, the CHOGM Taskforce needed 500 WA people to volunteer to help save money for their six months hotel bill. Many people started to rename CHOGM as Chaps Holidaying On Government Money. Heaven knows the state paid enough money for the Festival and additional police hours not covered by CHOGM security budget. But all that said, I hope people availed themselves of some of the culture offerings laid out for them. The party was paid for, they may as well attend.

SOME FACTOIDS