Flat as!

Melbourne is flat as! (Note: Aussie way of "as" usage to replace "very" with adjectives. It's hot as! You're late as!) Anyway, I declared a while ago that this city goes through a crisis of stairs. In CBD (Central Business District) there are plenty of skyscrapers, but as soon as you leave that small area, Melbourne and its suburbs are as flat as the water in my picture (Melbourne can only be guessed in the distance). The Dandenong Ranges and Otway National Park, plus a few other hills in the Yarra Valley and the Mornington Peninsula send some peaks above the horizon line, but they are far from the heart of the city and Melbourne's suburbs are a monotonous collection of one floor houses, sometimes two spread on a few lean hills. Condos and apartment buildings are so rare, their contribution to a zig-zagging horizon line is minimal. Just in the recent year or two did this start to change. I miss the stairs in areas of Silver Lake and Santa Monica and the hills in Hollywood and Philadelphia. I miss the variety of tall buildings from NY and LA... I need to climb.

Stretching My Net Like a Spider

It's a sunny day today and it feels more like spring than winter, a hybrid between the winter I am living in today and the summmers of August I lived in for so many years in the Northern hemisphere. I am stretching an imaginary net to relax in the warm sun, to bask, unlike the spider in my picture who is a hungry animal. I will spend time writing now, using the calmness of the pleasant afternoon bouncing a bit in my net of inspiration.

Olympic Games (Part 2)

This is a very short post with just two comments on the games. First, the Australian commentators are pathetic. The one who really frustrated me this morning sounded rightfully disappointed that the "Missile" Magnussen, a good Aussie swimmer, got the silver medal in 100 m freestyle, just 0.01 seconds behind the American winner. The Aussie commentator said that he believes it is not right that one hundredth of a second should separate two athletes. Luckily, the other commentator immediately jumped in to disagree with him and say that this is the way it should be, especially in the Olympic Games, and the smallest difference should be accounted in judging who is the winner. My second comment about the games is not related to sport itself, but to the organization and planning of the games. After being given the medal, each athlete also receives a small bouquet of flowers. I think the idea is sweet, but does it look good to see a weightlifter or an impressively strong swimmer (you get the idea) walk around with a small bunch of yellow and pink flowers? Some athletes handle them awkwardly and in fact, while posing with the medal, the bouquet seems only a nuisance... Today's picture is my bouquet for the day, another tropical plant of ancient symmetry, so green I could almost smell the chlorophyll while taking the picture.

Olympic Games (Part 1)

I love watching the Olympics because I believe it brings out the highest competitive spirit in athletes and it gives them a chance to claim a place in a world sports ranking. As spectators, we get the best out of it, effortless enjoyment of the best moments in sports. All sports. Of course there is the element of surprise, as well as drama and sometimes sublime. I wish I could sit and watch all day all sports, and if I could have a fair commentary for each of them, that would be a plus. Thirty years ago I watched Olympics through the biased eye of the Romanian Television, which was censored to show mostly competitors from Romania and the other socialist countries, none of the “corrupted” Western athletes. Then, I imagined how on the other side of the political border, the “free” countries watched indiscriminately athletes from any country as long as they were producing the top competition and results. But then I moved to the US and the first Olympics I watched as an American resident were so focused on the US athletes, there was hardly any time for the foreign ones. I understood the point of view and the business behind TV time, but now in Australia it’s yet another experience. Better than US TV, Aussie TV programs from the Olympics show the action from the most popular sports, even if the Aussie athletes are not in competition anymore. Kudos for that. The difference is in the sports in which Australian athletes participate, and which remind me of Commonwealth sports, such as hockey and equestrian. We are seeing a lot of action from these sports and learning a lot about them. The amazing horses I saw in equestrian are nothing like the horses I saw on the side of the road in Tasmania (see picture), of course. Yet, such sports only make ones love and admiration for these animals grow stronger!

Enchanted Maze Gardens

A play date, a trip to the Mornington Peninsula, and a play date... Some week-ends start by being quite straightforward and planned flatly for the purpose of entertaining the kids. So we headed to the Enchanted Maze Garden in Mornington Peninsula, just South East of Melbourne. The kids were old enough to get lost in the mazes, which were one more creative than the other. Meanwhile, a walk through the beautifully groomed gardens took me to a wilder corner, a forest of eucalyptus, and brought me face-to-face with these striking sculptures (see picture). They were laid on tree stubs, as if the faces worked from the heart of the tree to come out and salute us. I sat among them and thought that if I were to spend a night among them, I’d be sure to hear them whisper Aboriginal dreamtime stories.

From Above the Rainforest

Otway National Park extends for miles East of Melbourne, on the coast. We did the Otway Fly Treetop Walk on a beautiful afternoon, while driving on the Great Ocean Road. The walk sometimes 25 meters above the forest is surprising because it puts you face to face with trees and shows you the unseen side of trees shorter than the suspended path, yet, taller than you when you walk around them on the ground. This is how the fern tree gully looks like from above (see picture). The forest is full of Myrtle Beech, Mountain Ash and eucalyptus. Crimson rosellas fly around together with wrens and robins.

Tradies

Tradesmen are called "Tradies" in this country. They include plumbers, electricians (aka sparkies), roofing specialists, painters, and carpenters (aka chippers). Maybe others are also included and I don't know. As funny as it may sound, I met the Tradies on the road. I drive to work in the same time with them, around 7AM. I know this because they are the only drivers I see wearing yellow, green or orange fluoro jackets. They drive trucks and utes most often. I know also that they don't work on weekends, because we have some things to fix in the house and it's taking forever to have them fixed for the simple reason that Tradies don't like to work on weekends. They don't say it upfront, but they invent so many excuses, most of them childish or outrageously hard to believe (lies), that work either never gets done or gets done when one of us finally decides to stay home during the week, not do our own work, but at least have the house repairs done. I recently learnt why Tradies can afford to not work on weekends. They are among the best paid people in Australia, which means they can choose when to work and what work to do. Here is one example. A window in one of our bedrooms could not be opened and the "repairman" said that it needed to be painted on the outside, because rain was makign the wood frame swell and thus blocked the window from opening. We could not stay home when the came to paint the window, so he painted the window shut from the outside! After I complained, another "repairman" came and finished the job properly. He forced the winodw open, shaved some wood to allow it to open and then repainted.