Best Sensory Items of 2007

With all the "best of" lists floating around, I figured I would put together a little list of my own.

Best Taste:
Kangaroo. I miss that bouncy meat. Low in fat, high in protein and Iron, and environmentally friendly! We used it for everything from burritos to spaghetti Bolognese.

Best Smell:
Gorilla Coffee. Roasted right here in Brooklyn and making it easier for me to adjust from the excellent Aussie coffees, a bag of this powdered gold sends me to heaven without ever leaving the borough.

Best Sight:
Sydney Harbour - Opera House, Harbour Bridge and all - from Kirribilli as the sun set on the day Dana and I got engaged.

Best Feeling:
Being attacked by mosquitoes in Florence. Possibly the most fun miserable night.

Best Sound:
LCD Soundsystem or Talk of the Nation - from my nano.

Sydney at Night

Sydney at night. I took this photo a few years ago from the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I sent it to Sydney's free weekly newspaper, City Weekly, and it was published. I also won 100 free digital prints! The warm color of Rocks is a nice contrast to the cool blues of company logos on the buildings.

Photo from Sydney Farewell

My friend from Sydney, Sam, known for dancing hip-hop, sent me this photo from our farewell party. From left to right (we're all over the place, but I'm going based on the spot right between the eyes): Anna, Fiona, Glenn, Aaron, Glenn, Denis, Dana, Alexis, Sam, Lana and Ben. There are a lot of 'a's and 'n's in those names, aren't there. 11 a's and 12 n's. The n's win! I'm happy because I didn't bet on n. We didn't have a black and white theme to the party, but for some reason we wound up dressed that way.

There we go. Now it looks like it's from a long time ago. And the black and white makes more sense. Thanks for the photo Sam.

Dwarbi's Roof - Poolside Extravaganza

If you've come to my blog recently and noticed a lack of updates, I've just made up for it. Dana and I are enjoying the sun and sand in Palm Cove, Queensland, at the moment, and I finally had a chance to hook up my laptop. While I have yet to organise the photos for, or write about, the cassowary attack in the Daintree, our diving experiences on the Great Barrier Reef, or general impressions of Far North Queensland, I can offer you a few delectable bits of farewell goodies as well as some decent rainforest stories. They are all below, but here are links, for your convenience:
Work Farewell
A Long Farewell Weekend
Writing in Cape Tribulation
Mt Sorrow

We're heading off to Singapore in the morning, then on to Europe... I'll try not to get too far behind.

Final Goodbyes in Sydney

June 2nd was a sad day for me and Dana. This was the day of our farewell party at the 3 Weeds Hotel in Rozelle. The Wine Room in the back was ours for the night, and we kept it full... about 60 people at one point! The night was full of laughs and good times. We've made some stellar friends in Australia and are going to miss all of them.

The pub closed at midnight, so a group of us moved on to the Red Lion Hotel, a really classy joint down the road. A few of us wanted to break out of there, so we were lucky when a limo driver offered to give us a ride back to Ben and Jen's. There was not enough room for all of us, so the limo took about half of us, and the rest took a cab. The party continued at Ben & Jen's new apartment in Balmain until late in the night.

On Sunday a number of us found the energy to go to the Australian for lunch. We wound up eating lunch and dinner there, delaying the inevitable good bye as long as we could. The Australian is the first pub we went to when we moved the Sydney, and the last one as well.

Enjoy the photos from the weekend. It was an amazing send-off, so to all of you who made it such a success, thank you, and we'll miss you.

Relive the night, day and night only on dwarbi's roof.

Work Farewell

Thursday the 31st of May was my last day at work. I don't have anything lined up in the States, but I am going to find something new and see where it takes me. The analogy I use is surfing. Seven years ago I started as a graphic designer and rode that wave until now, learning new skills, taking on new roles and going with the flow, but taking advantage of the wave. This trip is like going back to the beach for a bit before heading back out to catch another wave.

My work mates organised a fantastic farewell. We had a section of Settlement Bar, below the Westpac building, and it was a proper send off. Of course I made it back to work to finish up a few things and give out my last good byes, and then we went back out the Belgian Beer Cafe. We were placing bets on when Mark would get kicked out, but he showed us all and eventually left of his own free will!

Experience it here.

¡Adios, Apartment!

We move out of our apartment this morning, so it was perfect timing for our washing machine to blow up. The full load of laundry had to be transferred to the tub for drip-drying before bringing them to Jen & Ben's. Good fun!

And so this is the last blog entry from dwarbi's roof in Sydney. dwarbi's roof will be hitting the road. Stay tuned for entries from Queensland, Singapore, Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany and Belgium... and then New York!

I leave you with some photos from an impromptu party this past Tuesday night. Sam makes centerfold again, but not while dancing hip-hop.

How Do I Tell This Story? Charlie The Rabbit Would Know

Saturday the 26th of May was a beautiful day in Sydney. This was the seventh day straight that the city would see nothing in the sky but deep blue during the day and Lite Brite pin-holed black at night. Dana woke up with a sore throat, but after 11 hours of sleep, we were well-rested and ready for a full day.

Dana had lunch plans with Jenny, while I finished back-ups of our hard drives and sorted through paperwork. Afterwards, we set off to Glenn & Alexis's for dinner. They live across the harbour, in Neutral Bay, so we decided to walk the Harbour Bridge one last time. It's a nice walk - long but not excessively so. We popped into The Australian Heritage Hotel for a middy of Little Creatures before the big journey across the bridge.

We were supposed to be in Neutral Bay fairly early, so we were crossing the bridge just before sunset. At Milson's Point I decided to scoot back down towards the water for one last good shot of the Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. There was a little secluded area, surrounded by an old stone wall, so we check that place out. Someone had laid out a picnic blanket with some champagne, cheese and chocolate-covered strawberries right on the grass.

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Nearing the bridge, I realised that we were running a bit early, so I figured that a stop into The Australian would be a perfect way to buy some time, calm my nerves and use the toilet. I don't think I've ever ordered a half pint at the Aussie, but Dana didn't seem to notice the anomaly.

Up on the bridge we took some photos in the same positions as ones we took two and a half years earlier. As we neared the end of the bridge, I noticed a man sitting in the park near the water. I knew this guy. He was wearing his signature "Communist Party" t-shirt, with Castro, Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao having a few cocktails. This was my friend Glenn, and he was also stroking his bushy beard as he flipped through a book next to a picnic rug.

Once we were off the bridge and on the street I gave Glenn a call to see if he needed anything else. He didn't, and we jumped down closer to the water for a shot of the Opera House as the sun set.

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I had to stop into the Aussie for a quick one to calm my nerves and to buy some time. My goal was to get to the spot at 4:15, leaving just enough time for us to enjoy the sunset.

The walk across the bridge was nice, except that Glenn stood out like a sore thumb. Dana glanced down and noted that there was a picnic, but she didn't recognise Glenn... somehow.

As we neared the water, my call to Glenn was the cue for him to abandon the site.

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Those are three different ways to tell the story up to that point, but the next part is the most exciting: she said yes! Well, first she said no... but then she said yes!

That's right, on Saturday, May 26th, I asked Dana to marry me. She was extremely surprised and her first response was disbelief, so she covered her face, laughing, shaking, jumping up and down and saying "no! no! no!" before I asked her if she was really saying no. She clarified: "No, I mean yes!"

Dana did not realise that the picnic rug was ours, but she understood when I got down on one knee. It was a wonderful sunset that night, and we enjoyed the goodies for a solid hour and a half before swinging back into the city for a drink at the Shangri-La Hotel and dinner at Dana's favourite restaurant in Sydney, Sushi-e.

Luckily, there was a woman out walking her rabbit, and she offered to snap a few shots to mark the occasion. Sadly, I did not get a photo of the rabbit.

And so we are heading back to the States, ready to start a new life together!

Some photos of the day here.

Bottling at Simon's

Glenn, Simon and I bottled our last brew together last weekend [sniff-sniff]. We had two brews spewing all over Simon's kitchen floor: a hefeweizen that was a Glenn's recipe and a double IPA that was my recipe. Both had active yeasts that made short work of Simon's floor.

At bottling time, both brews showed great promise. The hefe could do with some cooling and carbonation, the DIPA could do with a bit of bubbles and some aging. We had no problem enjoying them from cask though.

The challenge was homebrewing in Simon's apartment, which has neither a slop sink nor a bathtub. What he did have was a big, plastic sock drawer and a shower with boiling-hot water and lots of places for me to stick bottle labels. And he also had a big fence out back, on which we could dump spent grain and trub.

When bottling got tiresome, we swung by Subway or set up the hookah with some dried apples. More here.

Cory's SPECIAL DAY

Thursday was Cory, aka Cory Burn,'s (not sure where the apostrophe goes there) birthday. After some beverages at Pier 26 and dinner at Chinta Ria, we popped back to our place so Nick could purchase a bathroom scale, or "scales" as the kiwis say. This is a great shot of Cory wearing the SPECIAL DAY hat Dana got him, and of Nick's disgust of his brother's outfit. The scale(s) were left in the cab. If you have seen said bathroom scales, please call crimestoppers.

54 Squid For a Java, Govna

I begin this post with a horrociously bastardised title as a shout out to good ole señor Bush, whose gaffs with the Queen of England today made big-time headlines. I don't usually blog about current events, whether it's winking presidents or homosexual necrophiliac ducks, since there are a million other blogs to cover that. I prefer to stick to entries of a more personal nature, and, believe or not, neither of these stories hit too close to home. Nonetheless, I will continue. If there is one thing I appreciate about President Bush, it's that he seems down to earth. If there's one thing I appreciate about mallards, it's that they're very open-minded and non-judgmental. And I'm thankful that there were no ducks present at the ceremony. I take that back. That would have been really funny. Even funnier if GW made some comment about the "First King, Jimmy the Greek" while the ducks were at it.

Onwards. I've been collecting 5 cent pieces for some time... the goal being the purchase of a large cup of coffee from the guys down at Bar Balini. I've been going down there for years, and they hassle me whenever they can, so why not drop 54 tiny little annoying coins on their counter? At this moment, as an American, it's especially appropriate for me to burden some servants of a long-forsaken British colony with Queen Elizabeth II.

I was quite surprised when I spilled the despicable silver onto the counter and neither Michael nor Anthony batted an eye. I thought for sure one of them would bat my head. Then I noticed a pile of silver next to mine... obviously the buying power not of a prankster, but a knucklehead who doesn't understand what a hassle it is for these guys! At least I intended to inconvenience them! Anthony shook his head and said, "Goddam, mate," as he scooped the coins off the counter and picked the strays from the tuna salad meant for lunch.

Redoak Beer Appreciation Dinner

My birthday festivities have already begun! Since we will be traveling during my Dana decided to give me somethingbirthday, she knew I wanted before we left: a Redoak Beer Class. I'm a fan of Redoak's beer and food, so this was a real treat. It's also a great bargain... especially for me since I didn't pay for anything. Dana sent Glenn along with me. Some of you may know Glenn from Aaron's Anzac Day Party or Frank Miller's 300.

The event started at 4:30 with a complimentary red ale at the bar. Their red is a smooth beer. A subtle red, with the malty flavour you expect but without the slap in the face that some people don't like about reds.

The dinner was completely sold out. In fact, Dana had to beg them to make room for two more. Since we're regulars and are leaving these shores in a few weeks, they did. Solid folks over there. Glenn and I were sitting at a long table with a row of people sitting on one side and six other tables were laid out perpendicular to ours. We were pretty much in the middle of the dais. Then Janet Holyoak, the manager and co-owner of Redoak pointed us out as "notable guests"! It pays to be a regular, but my face turned redder than the beer I had just finished.

The meal was four courses and each was served with a matching beer:
1. Blue swimmer crab and avocado salad served with Redoak's Zest. The dressing was "smoked scallop ceviche, turmeric and ginger dressing" but the scallops had a lovely presence that was greater than just a dressing. There was a good amount of crab, which I appreciate even more when I don't have to do the work involved with procuring the meat from a shell. It was a fantastic dish. The avocado cut the citrus perfectly, and the Zest was a perfect compliment. The Zest, brewed in honour of head chef Richard Park's first child, is a Belgian blonde with additions of ginger, lime and lemon. This is reminiscent of the first of Dave Hollyoak's beers: ginger beer. I think I can safely assume that the use of ginger in this beer is a lot more refined than when Dave was 14. It's a really well-balanced brew.

While we ate, Redoak's beer sommelier, Simon Beverage, talked about the history of beer dating back to 10,000 BC. He presented a lot of very interesting information that was new to me, and he did it well. Back in the day, people thought that beer was a gift from the gods. This thought has not changed much.
"Beer sommelier?" you ask.
"Why yes, 'beer sommelier'," I reply. Simon is one of two in Australia. They help people understand that beer can be the perfect match to many meals.
"So who is the other beer sommelier in Australia?" you ask.
"Ian Watson, of of Brisbane fame, of course."

Though I'm not sure that this country is big enough to two beer sommelier. At the risk of using the word sommelier way too much, might I propose a beer sommelier steel cage match? I'm thinking of something in the vain of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. "Two beer sommeliers enter! One beer sommelier leaves!" I bet we can even get to Tina Turner to orchestrate/judge. She doesn't seem to be too busy at the moment. If not, maybe both Simon and Ian can continue sommeliering in harmony. Maybe Master Blaster can become the third beer sommelier in Australia.

2. Squid ink and stout risotto served with honey ale. The risotto also had shaved fennel and grilled scampi tail. Once again, the seafood addition was enough to be appreciated on its own. Ever since I got to Australia, I've been a fan of the squid ink risotto. This one was very fine. I think I'm going to get some pet squids and start milking them so that I can make this at home. The honey ale, as with the red and Zest, is very well balanced. The honey comes through in the back notes.

3. Roast Rauch Marinated Veal served with brown porter. The veal was served on Sicilian caponata, truffled veal sweetbreads and Outmeal stout jus. So the meat was marinated in their rauch beer, served with oatmeal stout jus and accompanied by a brown porter. You may think that the subtlety was lost, but the brews compliment each other extremely well. I would say that this was the most complex and successful pairing of the night. The brown porter is one of my favourite regulars available at Redoak, but I prefer to order them by the pint. This way the beer is warmer for the second half. My one criticism here is that the porter was served a tad too cold.

About this time Dave took over from Simon and went into more recent beer history, including Australia's craft beer scene and Redoak's own techniques. Specifics on the techniques were sparse, but we'd all been enjoying the fruits of Dave's labours during dinner and general responses were more than sufficient. I'm looking forward to further experimentation.

4. Redoak's chocolate and orange tasting plate served with oatmeal stout. The tasting plate consisted of:

• Chocolate and orange tart - Thin slice of a larger tart. Powerful chocolate blast to my face. Rich and delicious.
• Orange and chocolate creme caramel - Well-presented, this gelatinous glob still couldn't get me over my dislike of gelatinous blobs. No, my village was not raided by hoards of gelatinous blobs when I was a child, but Jell-o was one of four things I could eat when I was very sick at the age of 16. The texture still bothers me. I have the same problem with plain broth, ginger ale and Warm Potato and Goat Cheese Terrine served with aged sherry wine.
• Triple chocolate and orange brownie - A small square of brownie that packed a lot of punch. Add the orange flavoured faerie floss = WHAMMO! Faerie floss is something that cracks me up. In the USA (US of A, as Snoop would say) we call it cotton candy. Here in Oz, not only is it called faerie floss, "fairy" is spelled completely differently. It must be traumatic for a child to relocate.

The oatmeal stout is equally in-your-face and the bitterness goes very well with the dark chocolate and orange flavours.

Then it was back to bar for one more complimentary beer, the organic pale ale. Did I mention this is a bargain? Glenn and I stuck around for a bit and chatted with some other beer lovers. Redoak is a haven in Sydney. If you get a chance to do a beer class, I highly recommend you do. Book in early though.

Yum Cha

This morning Dana finally tried yum cha. This is a brunch/lunch meal quite popular in Chinatown here in Sydney, but I have to be honest and say that I have no idea if it is a meal in China's towns. What I do have an idea of is how tasty it is! Lana and Sam know their dishes, so they ordered up some good stuff. We skipped the chicken feet. I've had them before: 1. they're a lot bigger than you'd think 2. when you remember that they run around on chicken shit all day they become less appealing and more appalling. It was a great meal, and Dana even had a go at being a trolley dolly! Our experience was at Emperor's Garden, across from Market City. Good stuff.
More here.

Bennifer Curry

Our friends Jen & Ben live on the other side of Sydney CBD, way up on the 87th floor of Century Tower. The apartment commands a view of Sydney Harbour and an army of Sydney Centurion Tower commandos. Don't ask them about the commandos, they'll insist that this is a lie.

Our next-to-last-most-recent visit was exciting thanks to SAS training on the building next door. Helicopters would fly in low, between the office and apartment buildings, to let trainees drop onto the roof of a building. It's a dangerous task: the helicopters could crash into one of the buildings it narrowly passes or a trainee could slip and fall to his death... but it will all pay off when Fox decides to shoot the next series of 24 in Sydney.

Our most recent visit was exciting because we had people in a bag and destroyed towers ourselves! The people in the bag were only there on paper (sigh) and the towers destroyed were only made of wooden sticks, a la jenga. I did make a helicopter sound after the tower fell over, if that helps.

So what really happened? Ben & Jen organised a fantastic curry night. Everyone brought a curry dish. Rice and side dishes were provided by the hosts... then we ate. Oh, we ate. Shout out to the meat represented at Bennifer's Curry Night:

• Lamb!! That's right, it would be un-Australian not to include you
• Beef!! Cheap and reliable, thanks for your continued presence in meals across the world*
• Chicken!! You clucky bugger, source of so much protein... props! Leg or breast? haha, I'm just kidding
• Goat!! This can-do, can-eating animal provides excellent flesh to us carnivores willing to cook them
• Vegetables! Sorry that you only get one exclamation point. Eggplant is cool and all, but it's no goat

*Except places where they don't eat beef.

Photos here.

Glenn Hinton Dancing

Glenn Hinton dances at Aaron's place on Anzac Day.

If you can't see the movie, try this.

Anzac Day Antics

"Ohhhh, Anzac Day, Anzac Day, 2-up and beer." You all know that old song. Well, yesterday we had a chance to sing along to this song as well as many others (such as We Are the World) in Rozelle. Aaron & Ben threw a solid party, complete with 2-up! 2-up? Anzac? Little help here.

• Anzac = Australian and New Zealand Army Corps
• Anzac Day = Australian and New Zealand Army Corps Day, so you could also call it Anzacd

This day, the 25th of April, even if it lands on a Wednesday, is a public holiday meant to honour the diggers. Diggers?

• Diggers = Anzac soldiers

Anzac Day starts with a dawn service, about a quarter after 4 in the morning. There are parades all over Australia and New Zealand. Supermarkets are closed until 1PM out of respect for the diggers. Pubs generally open just after the dawn service. Then people play 2-up (two-up). 2-up (two-up?)?

• 2-up = This is a gambling game that is banned every day of the year except Anzac Day. (I know, it just gets weirder and weirder, doesn't it?) The game involves a "spinner" placing two coins on a flat stick, called a "kip". After this, I've heard many variations on the rules. Essentially you bet if the coins will turn up heads or tails. If their mixed, you spin again. A "boxer" oversees bets with the spinner, and other people can place side bets. It's good fun.

The story is that during WWI, Turkish troops saw a group of Australian troops playing two-up. They were too far away to see what was happening, but they saw the diggers' heads bobbing up and down. The Turks decided not to attack because they assumed they were praying. They were not too far off thinking that gambling was an Australian religion.

Back to the BBQ. After the two-up ended and we had a good comb through Aaron's record collection, we hit the 3 Weeds just down the road. It was an excellent day/night, though it made today, a Thursday, feel like a Monday/Friday.

Check out all the good shots here, including wolfman.

We ARE the world.

Impromptu Party

Last Thursday we had nothing much planned. Ben sent an email around calling folks around to Sweeney's before they close and before he disappears into house maintenance responsibilities. Up on the roof of Sweeney's our group grew from 4 to 8 to 12 to 16 to 20. As the night grew on and the crowd grew, we realised we might need another venue - perfect time for an impromptu party!

Back at the Savoy we kicked on with a new cocktail called "the dwarbi". I won't go into detail, but it contains vodka and blue caraco, and not much else. The party rocked until about 3AM*. This was a great chance to spend some quality time with some close friends before the Big Trip, and it reminded both me and Dana of how much we'll miss them. The night.

(*for some of us, not me)

Frog & Toad

Struth mate, Dana and I are heading back to New York/New Jersey. Yes there's a stroke/slash there in NY/NJ. After living here in Oz for over two years, we've decided it's time to move back. Both of us have made countless fantastic antipodean friends, many of whom we hope to teach how to walk upright while they visit us in New York. (/New Jersey.)

We will be in Australia for a couple of months longer while we wrap up work, say farewell to friends, plan our trip home, and decide on which side of the stroke/slash we will live in the United States of America. I'm looking forward to making the most of these last weeks in Australia. Shit! I need to eat a witchetty grub, learn to surf and throw a boomerang all in such a short time!

Easter in Sydney

Today we had Ben & Jen and Glenn & Alexis over for Easter dinner. Dana handled the appetisers: blue cheese & jam, baked camembert with cranberry & walnut, feta and pesto crostinis.
I took care of the main course: two lamb shoulder roasts with garlic, potato, zucchini, carrot, onion & brussels sprouts. Yeah, sounds gross, but you haven't tried my version.
Desert was back over to Dana: mini cheesecakes with a blueberry compote. Bloody beautiful, as they say here in Australia.

Easter is an odd time here in Sydney: Friday and Monday are public holidays and nearly everything is closed. It's mandated and heavy fines are imposed if anyone breaks these rules.

On the other hand, Sydney-siders take to enjoying these holy days by going to the races and fully enjoying the four-day holiday. This means lots of drunk clowns on the street late at night, screaming. Why do they have to scream? The women are falling-down drunk and wearing silly hats, so you would think they would want to keep a low profile. Their male companions have every reason to keep a lid on things for their own interests.

For the rest of us it's just a mess. Yes I nearly tossed an egg on some folks last night, but I stopped. On that note I shall go to sleep tonight.

oh, and a Happy Easter shout out to my digital neighbour Gordon!

Hot Cross Buns!

Ah, the hot cross bun: an Easter tradition here in Australia and other British colonies. I assume the Americans stopped the tradition around the same time as they dropped the u's and cancelled the Queen's Birthday public holiday. It's offered on or near Good Friday, and the cross on top represents the crucifixion. Some schools in England have stopped serving them in order to be sensitive to non-Christians. Something Bill O'Reilly might call a War On Easter! But seriously people, you're eating a crucifix... who should be offended here?

So what is this "hot cross bun!"? (For some reason it is frequently followed by an exclamation point.) Well, you would imagine a warm, sticky, gooey sweet pastry of some kind. This is what I expected two years ago when I was invited to try my first hot cross bun! I lingered in the kitchen area and watched the boxes being opened. I picked one up, careful not to burn my fingertips - no worries, it's cold.

Let me inspect this foreign dish on my plate. Hmmm, it looks like white bread. There's a white cross on the top, so that must be extra sweet. The top's a bit shiny. There is one raisin sticking out of one of the sides... I made sure to get one with a raisin - about one in four.
Now to taste: still cold. Not sweet. Tastes like a dinner roll. It's really not very sweet at all. Smother it with some butter or jam and it's a good morning snack!

I'm about to try my third round of hot cross buns! today. Maybe today I'll understand why this tradition has persisted. It's clear why other traditions have persisted: presents on Christmas because we like presents; candy on Halloween because we like to eat candy; beer on St. Pat's because we like to get drunk.

If you care to shed some light, please add a comment.

*** EDIT - The hot cross buns! that I had this morning were far better than any ones I've had before. A tradition worth keeping!