Sideways stories from Sydney-side
THE CASE OF THE MISSING TIM TAMS
The morning started off with the usual bout of HWA HWA HWA JIBBER JABBER JIBBER JABBER PEEP PEEP PEEP.
Still vaguely jet lagged, Vivian rolled out of bed at the usual time of 7:45am, sauntered to the kitchen and began her morning tea microwaving ritual. She passed Trylon's bathroom on the way where he was hacking up his lungs and sounded vaguely like someone was toilet plunging his throat.
BLEEP BLEEP. Her tea was ready. She grabbed it out and in a burst of sudden coordination, she managed to balance the hot tea and a huge box of tim tams on the same arm.
She sat herself down and took a sip of tea, reached for the tim tams and screamed.
"WHO ATE ALL THE TIM TAMS?! CURSE YOU! BLAST YOU! THAT YOU HAD NEVER BEEN BORN!"
Trylon wandered into the kitchen still coughing.
"IT WAS YOU WASN'T IT? WASN'T IT?!!!!"
"I-I-I-"
"BLAAAAAARGH!" Vivian launched at him in all her pre-caffeine rage only to be stopped midair by Gabriel who had also now woken up. Viv was thrashing in his arms as Trylon sat in his chair still gawking. Gabe spoke up.
"Um, Viv, remember, YOU ate all the tim tams last night?"
Everyone stopped.
"AHem. Right. Right. Sorry about that."
She quickly finished her tea and, avoiding eye contact, ran back to her room.
WILLIAM: HALF MAN, HALF STOMACH
Later in the day, a trip to Ashfield was proposed. Ashfield is a little suburb in western Sydney with a craptacular mall and a mini Chinatown of sorts. Coming along for the ride would be William, a Taiwanese/American who is in Gabe and Trylon's med class.
William has a reputation, well deserved, of being half man-half stomach. The previous night, Gabe and I had gone to eat Spanish food with Will on Oxford St.
(Funnily enough, Oxford St in London was a posh shopping street but in Sydney, it's notorious as the gay district. I thought Jo, Feroza and Salima would get a kick out of that!)
Anyhow, the waiter came over and Gabe and I ordered a dinner for two consisting of lamb, pasta, chicken, sausage and other tapas. He turned to take Will's order.
"And for you sir?"
"I'll have the same thing."
"Um, you realise, sir, that that is a meal for TWO persons. I highly recommend something else. It is a LOT of food for one person."
"No, I'll be fine. Would you also recommend the paella?"
"Sir, look over at that table over there", the waiter said and pointed to the table next to us which was laden with food, "that's the dinner for two. And there's more dishes coming."
"I'll be fine. Thanks."
The food came. Gabe and I had problems finishing the meal between the two of us. Will finished it all and then asked for the dessert menu. "I just love my food." he said and calmly shoved another piece of lamb in his mouth.
The surprising bit is that he is thin. Thin to bordering on skinny. He doesn't even have a pot belly and I swear his waist size is smaller than mine! He had a langorious way of eating which made it seem like it was the most intense experience of his life and yet, meant nothing at all to him. Inbetween mouthfuls, he told Gabe and I of his experiences in New York, the States and about the time he ate a dinner for four all by himself in Italy. His words came out slowly and he always wore a sleepy look on his face like a bored buddha. And as he spoke in his drawling manner, the food kept disappearing.
After his dessert of creme caramel, he wanted to go for gelato.
ASHFIELD: ON THE ROAD
So we all piled into the car and headed towards Ashfield. Trylon driving, me in shotgun, Will and Gabe in the back. 5 minutes into the drive, Trylon insisted that Gabe should get his MP3 player fixed at the mall. We screeched into a side street and tried to get back to the apartment for the MP3 player.
"F*CK! IT'S A CUL-DE-SAC!" said Trylon.
"CRAP! IT'S A CUL-DE-SAC!" said Gabe and I.
"CRAP! WHAT'S A CUL-DE-SAC?" said Will. (Bless his American heart)
We pulled an Austin Powers 6 point turn and got back to the mainstreet where we realised it was a left-turn only. We repeated the cursing sans the questions this time.
Driving in Sydney is a whole new experience for me. Last year, Gabe didn't have a car and I mostly took the transit everywhere in Sydney. It was exciting, this year, to be able to sit in the passenger seat and gawk as everything in the car is on the opposite side and you are supposed to drive on the other side of the streets. Every turn, I feel like we're about to go into oncoming traffic.
As we sat in the car and drove towards Ashfield, I had a sudden urge to hang my head out the window, let my tongue loll out the side of my mouth and bark at passers-by.
We went to some Shangai-style Chinese restaurant for lunch where the staff was rude and they only gave us 2 menus for 4 people. A sure sign of good food.
The first of the dishes arrived. It was sliced pig ears. The second dish arrived with strange turnip cakes deep fried and dipped in sesames. The third dish was my favorite, some strange dish of sliced kelp. "Try some" said Will and we all took some. I warily put it into my mouth with my chopsticks and nearly gagged.
"Mmmmm, you can really, uh, taste the um . . . ocean in it." I said.
"YECH!" said Gabe.
"Not what I was expecting" said Will and ate it anyway.
It tasted like the kelp that I had to untangle from my boat propeller in Bamfield, only with a little less gasoline. The fishy taste was unbearable and the salt sucked my mouth dry to the point of bitterness.
After lunch, we hit the cool Chinese fruit stores all down the street. There were so many unusual fruits and vegetables that I just ran around the place going crazy. "What's this? What the? ooh! What's this?!"
They had striped eggplants, weird guourds that were about a metre long and were called "drum sticks", yellow squat little squashes, strange artichoke like things, double-bananas (bananas stuck together and fused into a giant banana) and a whole bunch of other novel things. It was like grocery shopping on a whole other planet!!! Thinh and other Superstore produce kids would have gone nuts.
I refrained myself from buying anything as the previous week, I had bought some weird spikey looking "squashes" from the supermarket here and tried to eat them, only to discover they tasted like utter shite. I finally googled the name of them (Kiwano) and found out that they are "decorative fruit used for table arrangements and valued for their long shelf life. they also contain a chemical that is toxic to most mammals and should not be eaten."
Mmmmm. I still haven't died yet so they can't be THAT toxic. Unless I'm not a mammal . . .
All this was building up to what we found in the next store. Something so exotic and foreign that Gabe, Trylon and I nearly cried when we saw it.
Maple syrup. MAPLE SYRUP!!!!
It was Camp's Canadian Maple Syrup. It even had a Canadian flag on the label! For two years now, we had been whining that there was only cane sugar syrup down here and no maple syrup. Well, yesterday, we found it. I literally hugged the bottle and was about to kiss the Canadian flag on the bottle before I noticed Gabe and Trylon's hypochondriacal, germ-phobe faces of shock. "You don't know where that bottle's been!"
It strange, but you never notice how Canadian you are till you leave Canada eh?
ASHFIELD: THE ROOFTOP ADVENTURES
So we finished out shopping. I refilled on tim tams and other cookies and we headed back to the car. We loaded it up and Trylon inserted the keys to turn it on. He turned. Nothing happened. He jiggled the key and tried to start it again. Silence.
"F*CK!" said Trylon.
"F*CK!" said Will and Gabe.
"F*CK!" said Vivian. "Wait, what's going on?"
"THE BATTERY IS DEAD!"
It was dark by this time and we sat by ourselves on the rooftop of the mall in the old 89 Camry wondering what to do next. Trylon tried to flag down passersby to get a boost but only ended up sacring a 12 year-old boy whose parents protectively answered "NO" when they finally got to where Trylon and the kid were.
"Way to hit on the 12-year old Trylon" said Gabriel.
"You didn't even get the right gender. Sheez man." said Will.
"It was dark! I just htought he was a really really short adult!" said Trylon.
Will's idea came next. "Why don't we just send Vivian out to get help?"
"Why me?!" I asked frantically.
"Cus none of us have breasts."
"NEITHER DO I." I answered back angrily.
They all thought about it for a bit then wisely said nothing.
Meanwhile, Trylon was rubbing his feet against teh floormat and turning the key whilst yelling "ELECTRICAL POWERS . . . ACTIVATE!" Then slumping in defeat when nothing happpened.
Gabe piped up next. "Why don't we get alligator clips and clip them on Will's nipples and rub ballooons on his head?"
"you'd be better off with a potato" I said.
Will seemed keen on the idea but Trylon was deaf as he was still trying to connect to his inner electrical powers. "SHAZAAM!" Nothing.
Eventually, we called the NRMA which is the equivalent to the AMA in Alberta. They said they'd be there within the hour.
We sat around in the dark waiting. "Anyone know any campfire songs?"
"Kumbayah my Lord!" I offered.
Trylon wanted to sing along but the other two declined. We discussed various ways to mug the next person who drove by and steal their car. My vote was to lure them over the edge of the rooftop with tim tams.
At long last, the NRMA guy arrived. Trylon nearly humped the guy's leg he was so excited.
"Cheers mate."
"Cheers."
"Cheers"
"Mate"
"Mate"
"Cheers"
"Cheers"
"Cheers mate"
(you get the idea)
HOMEWARD BOUND
The NRMA guy drove off and we were on our way home. Unfortunately, it was only a 15 minute ride home and we had to keep the car running for 45 minutes. We decided to drive downtown to some other classmate's apartment to drop off some study kit of sorts. IT would be Trylon's first time driving downtown.
Suffice to say, it was an adventure. I snapped pictures out the window while Trylon and GAbe cursed as we got more and more lost. At one point, we had crossed the Sydney Harbour bridge and were literally on the "North Shore". We passed by the opera house, the Rocks, Pitt St. Mall and other major sights. After an hour or more, we finally made it and then proceeded to get lost on the way home.
"I don't believe this! WE can't get lost! I can always get home. I'm like a frickin salmon!" said Trylon.
We turned right, we turned left, we got honked, we stalled, we got blocked in by taxis, we turned left again, we spotted a Krispy Kreme, we got donuts, we turned left again, we stalled again, we turned right and then got home.
We arrived back in the parking lot of the apartment and I jumped out of the car.
"LAND!" I yelled and nearly hugged the pavement.
We got home and devoured the box of donuts we had purchased. It was my first Krispy Kreme experience and I can only say that after a box of those, I was so sugared out that even Tim Tams almost tasted bitter. (GASP! I KNOW!)
Fully greased and sugared out, I collapsed onto my bed and slept fitfully.
All in a day's work.
Earlier in the week, Gabe and I went tothe Australia reptile park where I lived out my lifelong dream of seeing a frill-necked lizard. I told Joanne this excitedly on MSN to which she responded "If I didn't know you any better, I'd say you were a boring person."
It was cool! I swear!
Gabe and I got lost on the way there and back (what is it with the Tsang brothers and driving in this city?) and we ended up at the airport at one point. What should have taken 2 hours took about 4 hours in total. Luckily, I was so happy about the frill-necked lizard that I didn't care.
Tomorrow, I am heading to the Blue Mountains just out of Sydney. They have some crazy Christmas festival going on there right now, even though it is the middle of July. Go figure. Crazy upside down continent.
Am off for more tim tams and tea now. I have posted up pictures from my Australia trip from this year and from my backpacking trip from last year! You can check them all out at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dying_giraffe/
Happy summer/winter to you all and for the love of all that is good and pure, don't run. It upsets our emus.
The morning started off with the usual bout of HWA HWA HWA JIBBER JABBER JIBBER JABBER PEEP PEEP PEEP.
Still vaguely jet lagged, Vivian rolled out of bed at the usual time of 7:45am, sauntered to the kitchen and began her morning tea microwaving ritual. She passed Trylon's bathroom on the way where he was hacking up his lungs and sounded vaguely like someone was toilet plunging his throat.
BLEEP BLEEP. Her tea was ready. She grabbed it out and in a burst of sudden coordination, she managed to balance the hot tea and a huge box of tim tams on the same arm.
She sat herself down and took a sip of tea, reached for the tim tams and screamed.
"WHO ATE ALL THE TIM TAMS?! CURSE YOU! BLAST YOU! THAT YOU HAD NEVER BEEN BORN!"
Trylon wandered into the kitchen still coughing.
"IT WAS YOU WASN'T IT? WASN'T IT?!!!!"
"I-I-I-"
"BLAAAAAARGH!" Vivian launched at him in all her pre-caffeine rage only to be stopped midair by Gabriel who had also now woken up. Viv was thrashing in his arms as Trylon sat in his chair still gawking. Gabe spoke up.
"Um, Viv, remember, YOU ate all the tim tams last night?"
Everyone stopped.
"AHem. Right. Right. Sorry about that."
She quickly finished her tea and, avoiding eye contact, ran back to her room.
WILLIAM: HALF MAN, HALF STOMACH
Later in the day, a trip to Ashfield was proposed. Ashfield is a little suburb in western Sydney with a craptacular mall and a mini Chinatown of sorts. Coming along for the ride would be William, a Taiwanese/American who is in Gabe and Trylon's med class.
William has a reputation, well deserved, of being half man-half stomach. The previous night, Gabe and I had gone to eat Spanish food with Will on Oxford St.
(Funnily enough, Oxford St in London was a posh shopping street but in Sydney, it's notorious as the gay district. I thought Jo, Feroza and Salima would get a kick out of that!)
Anyhow, the waiter came over and Gabe and I ordered a dinner for two consisting of lamb, pasta, chicken, sausage and other tapas. He turned to take Will's order.
"And for you sir?"
"I'll have the same thing."
"Um, you realise, sir, that that is a meal for TWO persons. I highly recommend something else. It is a LOT of food for one person."
"No, I'll be fine. Would you also recommend the paella?"
"Sir, look over at that table over there", the waiter said and pointed to the table next to us which was laden with food, "that's the dinner for two. And there's more dishes coming."
"I'll be fine. Thanks."
The food came. Gabe and I had problems finishing the meal between the two of us. Will finished it all and then asked for the dessert menu. "I just love my food." he said and calmly shoved another piece of lamb in his mouth.
The surprising bit is that he is thin. Thin to bordering on skinny. He doesn't even have a pot belly and I swear his waist size is smaller than mine! He had a langorious way of eating which made it seem like it was the most intense experience of his life and yet, meant nothing at all to him. Inbetween mouthfuls, he told Gabe and I of his experiences in New York, the States and about the time he ate a dinner for four all by himself in Italy. His words came out slowly and he always wore a sleepy look on his face like a bored buddha. And as he spoke in his drawling manner, the food kept disappearing.
After his dessert of creme caramel, he wanted to go for gelato.
ASHFIELD: ON THE ROAD
So we all piled into the car and headed towards Ashfield. Trylon driving, me in shotgun, Will and Gabe in the back. 5 minutes into the drive, Trylon insisted that Gabe should get his MP3 player fixed at the mall. We screeched into a side street and tried to get back to the apartment for the MP3 player.
"F*CK! IT'S A CUL-DE-SAC!" said Trylon.
"CRAP! IT'S A CUL-DE-SAC!" said Gabe and I.
"CRAP! WHAT'S A CUL-DE-SAC?" said Will. (Bless his American heart)
We pulled an Austin Powers 6 point turn and got back to the mainstreet where we realised it was a left-turn only. We repeated the cursing sans the questions this time.
Driving in Sydney is a whole new experience for me. Last year, Gabe didn't have a car and I mostly took the transit everywhere in Sydney. It was exciting, this year, to be able to sit in the passenger seat and gawk as everything in the car is on the opposite side and you are supposed to drive on the other side of the streets. Every turn, I feel like we're about to go into oncoming traffic.
As we sat in the car and drove towards Ashfield, I had a sudden urge to hang my head out the window, let my tongue loll out the side of my mouth and bark at passers-by.
We went to some Shangai-style Chinese restaurant for lunch where the staff was rude and they only gave us 2 menus for 4 people. A sure sign of good food.
The first of the dishes arrived. It was sliced pig ears. The second dish arrived with strange turnip cakes deep fried and dipped in sesames. The third dish was my favorite, some strange dish of sliced kelp. "Try some" said Will and we all took some. I warily put it into my mouth with my chopsticks and nearly gagged.
"Mmmmm, you can really, uh, taste the um . . . ocean in it." I said.
"YECH!" said Gabe.
"Not what I was expecting" said Will and ate it anyway.
It tasted like the kelp that I had to untangle from my boat propeller in Bamfield, only with a little less gasoline. The fishy taste was unbearable and the salt sucked my mouth dry to the point of bitterness.
After lunch, we hit the cool Chinese fruit stores all down the street. There were so many unusual fruits and vegetables that I just ran around the place going crazy. "What's this? What the? ooh! What's this?!"
They had striped eggplants, weird guourds that were about a metre long and were called "drum sticks", yellow squat little squashes, strange artichoke like things, double-bananas (bananas stuck together and fused into a giant banana) and a whole bunch of other novel things. It was like grocery shopping on a whole other planet!!! Thinh and other Superstore produce kids would have gone nuts.
I refrained myself from buying anything as the previous week, I had bought some weird spikey looking "squashes" from the supermarket here and tried to eat them, only to discover they tasted like utter shite. I finally googled the name of them (Kiwano) and found out that they are "decorative fruit used for table arrangements and valued for their long shelf life. they also contain a chemical that is toxic to most mammals and should not be eaten."
Mmmmm. I still haven't died yet so they can't be THAT toxic. Unless I'm not a mammal . . .
All this was building up to what we found in the next store. Something so exotic and foreign that Gabe, Trylon and I nearly cried when we saw it.
Maple syrup. MAPLE SYRUP!!!!
It was Camp's Canadian Maple Syrup. It even had a Canadian flag on the label! For two years now, we had been whining that there was only cane sugar syrup down here and no maple syrup. Well, yesterday, we found it. I literally hugged the bottle and was about to kiss the Canadian flag on the bottle before I noticed Gabe and Trylon's hypochondriacal, germ-phobe faces of shock. "You don't know where that bottle's been!"
It strange, but you never notice how Canadian you are till you leave Canada eh?
ASHFIELD: THE ROOFTOP ADVENTURES
So we finished out shopping. I refilled on tim tams and other cookies and we headed back to the car. We loaded it up and Trylon inserted the keys to turn it on. He turned. Nothing happened. He jiggled the key and tried to start it again. Silence.
"F*CK!" said Trylon.
"F*CK!" said Will and Gabe.
"F*CK!" said Vivian. "Wait, what's going on?"
"THE BATTERY IS DEAD!"
It was dark by this time and we sat by ourselves on the rooftop of the mall in the old 89 Camry wondering what to do next. Trylon tried to flag down passersby to get a boost but only ended up sacring a 12 year-old boy whose parents protectively answered "NO" when they finally got to where Trylon and the kid were.
"Way to hit on the 12-year old Trylon" said Gabriel.
"You didn't even get the right gender. Sheez man." said Will.
"It was dark! I just htought he was a really really short adult!" said Trylon.
Will's idea came next. "Why don't we just send Vivian out to get help?"
"Why me?!" I asked frantically.
"Cus none of us have breasts."
"NEITHER DO I." I answered back angrily.
They all thought about it for a bit then wisely said nothing.
Meanwhile, Trylon was rubbing his feet against teh floormat and turning the key whilst yelling "ELECTRICAL POWERS . . . ACTIVATE!" Then slumping in defeat when nothing happpened.
Gabe piped up next. "Why don't we get alligator clips and clip them on Will's nipples and rub ballooons on his head?"
"you'd be better off with a potato" I said.
Will seemed keen on the idea but Trylon was deaf as he was still trying to connect to his inner electrical powers. "SHAZAAM!" Nothing.
Eventually, we called the NRMA which is the equivalent to the AMA in Alberta. They said they'd be there within the hour.
We sat around in the dark waiting. "Anyone know any campfire songs?"
"Kumbayah my Lord!" I offered.
Trylon wanted to sing along but the other two declined. We discussed various ways to mug the next person who drove by and steal their car. My vote was to lure them over the edge of the rooftop with tim tams.
At long last, the NRMA guy arrived. Trylon nearly humped the guy's leg he was so excited.
"Cheers mate."
"Cheers."
"Cheers"
"Mate"
"Mate"
"Cheers"
"Cheers"
"Cheers mate"
(you get the idea)
HOMEWARD BOUND
The NRMA guy drove off and we were on our way home. Unfortunately, it was only a 15 minute ride home and we had to keep the car running for 45 minutes. We decided to drive downtown to some other classmate's apartment to drop off some study kit of sorts. IT would be Trylon's first time driving downtown.
Suffice to say, it was an adventure. I snapped pictures out the window while Trylon and GAbe cursed as we got more and more lost. At one point, we had crossed the Sydney Harbour bridge and were literally on the "North Shore". We passed by the opera house, the Rocks, Pitt St. Mall and other major sights. After an hour or more, we finally made it and then proceeded to get lost on the way home.
"I don't believe this! WE can't get lost! I can always get home. I'm like a frickin salmon!" said Trylon.
We turned right, we turned left, we got honked, we stalled, we got blocked in by taxis, we turned left again, we spotted a Krispy Kreme, we got donuts, we turned left again, we stalled again, we turned right and then got home.
We arrived back in the parking lot of the apartment and I jumped out of the car.
"LAND!" I yelled and nearly hugged the pavement.
We got home and devoured the box of donuts we had purchased. It was my first Krispy Kreme experience and I can only say that after a box of those, I was so sugared out that even Tim Tams almost tasted bitter. (GASP! I KNOW!)
Fully greased and sugared out, I collapsed onto my bed and slept fitfully.
All in a day's work.
Earlier in the week, Gabe and I went tothe Australia reptile park where I lived out my lifelong dream of seeing a frill-necked lizard. I told Joanne this excitedly on MSN to which she responded "If I didn't know you any better, I'd say you were a boring person."
It was cool! I swear!
Gabe and I got lost on the way there and back (what is it with the Tsang brothers and driving in this city?) and we ended up at the airport at one point. What should have taken 2 hours took about 4 hours in total. Luckily, I was so happy about the frill-necked lizard that I didn't care.
Tomorrow, I am heading to the Blue Mountains just out of Sydney. They have some crazy Christmas festival going on there right now, even though it is the middle of July. Go figure. Crazy upside down continent.
Am off for more tim tams and tea now. I have posted up pictures from my Australia trip from this year and from my backpacking trip from last year! You can check them all out at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dying_giraffe/
Happy summer/winter to you all and for the love of all that is good and pure, don't run. It upsets our emus.
posted by Viv at 6:12 p.m.
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