je t'aime le creme glacee!

when my sister was in grade nine she was one of several students in her french immersion class who took part in an exchange program with students in paris. you know the deal: two weeks in paris over march break, see the eiffel tower and the louvre, eat croissant, then swap it up, show off the cn tower and get nail polish at ardene, then go your separate ways. so kate went to paris and several months later a girl named fanny came to bunk at 8 doonaree. i had already left home but i trust that my family made her feel welcome and took every effort to make her time away from france enjoyable and rewarding. my mom went so far as to attempt to converse with young fanny in french, something one might assume would be par for the course for a person living in a supposedly bilingual country, but then you never heard my mom speak french. it was not so much french as it was very polite english spoken through pursed lips and with a trace of pepe le peu. but it was an effort and i will not take that away from my mom. she tried, and valiantly at that, to speak a foreign tongue, but past the bonjours and sil vous plaits, her vocabulary was a mite limited. which might explain why when fanny, my mom, and kate were having some ice cream on a warm fall evening, my mom, with the purest intentions at heart, bravely exclaimed, "je t'aime le creme glacee!" what she was trying to say was that she loved ice cream, but what she actually said was "i love you the ice cream." her heart may have been in the right place, but the t' was not.

speaking english in southeast asia is not unlike speaking french with my mom. the intention, the determination, the thought: it's all there, just not all in the right place. of course, why would it be? the native language in these countries is thai, khmer, malay- not english. so why should they speak it? logic would dictate that they shouldn't have to and all travelers should instead take a stab at butchering the local language. but english is a bit of a schoolyard bully and has stomped its way across milk cartons, newspapers, and hair dye bottles the globe round. and so it has come to pass that for the past eight weeks chris and i have been highly entertained by the broken, well-meaning english printed along our trail.

it all began in beijing, where out hotel fire exit sign informed us that "if of the fire, the not old people before or children, but selfish to first, then other." funny, but you get the gist, right? plus, it's sometimes nice to get permission to be unabashedly selfish to first. and the permutations of this pidgin english have followed us, from promises of "computer internet stuffing!" to the aforementioned hair dye box advertising an alluring head of milkteabeige coloured tresses. glamorous, i'm sure. though the most entertaining so far has certainly been an email i received about a reservation request that i have copied verbatim below:

Sawasdee Brian Rieper,

I just want to say thanks a million for interested in Haad Khuad Resort. So that's I reply to answer your question about the bungalow is available on 12th of August 2008, it isn't?. I can not to tell you and too reconfirmation anything. Please you will be checking again when you will be arrive at here.

I am wishing to have a chance to service you and I hope to seeing you soon.

Thanks a million again.

Kind regards,
Haad Khuad Resort

what on earth does that mean you ask? i'm sorry, but i can not to tell you. and to reconfirmation anything? good luck. but i am wishing to have a chance to service you.

maybe chris and i are bad people for laughing, but it's so innocent, so well-meaning that you can't help but giggle. i do, however, wish my mom was still around so that i could call her and tell her that here in southeast asia, they love you the ice cream, too.

the river wild.

generally, we all like to think that we are good people. right? we like to think that if we saw a wee old woman trip in the street, we would rush to her aid and help her right her cane and we certainly wouldn't laugh. of course we aren't mildly envious of the blessed gene pool inherited by shiloh jolie-pitt and those newborn twins. we like to think that we are non-judgmental and gracious, smiling in the face of other people's good fortune, never jealous. screw schadenfreude, we are good people. and when you've been reading the blogging exploits of a canadian or two, climbing great walls and riding elephants and seeing unspeakable beauty unfold before them each day, you've never had a moment of ill-will or green-eyed envy, right? right?

envy this.

we're in vang vieng in norther laos. we arrived on tuesday and scampered across the scenic footbridge to the western banks of the nam song river and checked into rustic maylyn guesthouse. unloaded our bags in the adorable bungalow (that cost $6 a night!) and retired in the garden for a fruit shake while hundreds of butterflies nestled in the flowering shrubs and a box of newborn puppies chirped behind the barn door. behind us, the sun set behind the misty landscape of dramatic limestone karst. anne geddes? was she here? were we to be wrapped in cheesecloth and photographed as pumpkins? because it certainly felt like it. too perfect, right? right.

last night, as we made our way home from swinging in hammocks and sipping beer laos at the island bar, it started to drizzle. as we bunkered down for the night, the rain picked up a bit; we could hear the determined patter on our banana leaf roof. then, sometime in the middle of the night, noah and his twin sets of animals must have set sail on the ark, because by morning the flood had come.

we lay in bed this morning, planning for a fun day of tubing down the river, stopping at riverside bars to swing off flying foxes, maybe having a mulberry mojito or two. ah, how foolish we were. we stepped out of the door of our bungalow and chris said, "uh, brian..." in a worrying tone, "we're missing our bottom step." and it was quite true: the nearby river had swollen up with the unrelenting rain and decided to take it on the road. all the way to us, swallowing the bottom of our stairs in the process. we waded through murky waters to breakfast, water lapping around our shins, rain still coming down. after brekky we arrived back at the room to discover that we had been negligent enough to lose not one, but now two stairs to the raging river. the water was knee-high and angrier than alec baldwin on the phone to his daughter. it was, perhaps, time to seek drier pastures.

it is still raining here in vang vieng. the city has put up its umbrella and gone inside to watch endless episodes of friends. chris and i have moved across the river to a considerably drier hotel room, though the front drive is still under a good two feet of water. we have not, needless to say, been able to go tubing today. that, and i lost my damn flashlight.

now remember: you are a good person. this does not provide you with the mildest of pleasure, nor do you think that we deserve it after raving about the fantastic beauty that is southeast asia. you are not smug, nor are you self-satisfied. right? right?

chris, obviously thrilled.

in the jungle.

chris and i have done a lot of things together in the three years since we met. we have been for high tea at the woolsley in london, england and for three dollar tacos on bloor street. we have watched seanna mckenna break hearts at stratford and tyra banks "put it in the eyes" on america's next top model. we have laughed and cried and played boggle. chris has taught me that a schedule doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing and conversely, chris has discovered that things can work out, even without said schedule. chris taught me how to tell if a barbeque tank still has propane in it. i taught him how to fold his underwear properly. in short, we've done a lot together.

but we had never been to the jungle together. we had never sat atop elephants and strode through the bush to a cascading waterfall. we had not, in the past three years, tip-toed into ancient thai caves filled with thousands of screeching bats. we had never quite had the opportunity to balance on bamboo rafts and try to stay dry as we tumbled downriver through frothing rapids. these are things we had not done. until now.

earlier this week we spent three fantastic days in the northern hills of thailand, the home of the karen hilltribe people. we hiked past lush rice paddies, the earth pregnant with the rain of the wet season. we scrambled up muddy ascents, griping our bamboo walking sticks with all of our might. we unrolled our sleeping bags on the bare floors of the huts where we spent the night, sleeping on the floor, looking up at the ceiling made of banana leaves, wondering why we, the collective we, ever decided that this wasn't enough. we met tribespeople clad in clothes woven with vibrant colour, people who spoke no words we could understand, our communication reduced to smiles, gestures, and the overwhelming realization that we want to get to know each other. why? because aside from the headwrap, we're not really all that different.

our time in the jungle was amazing. we would look up and have to stop to fully take in the beauty of where we were. we sat huddled out of the rain one night and learned thai folk songs and sang into the inky black night. it was an experience unlike anything else.

chris and i only hope that we will continue to do things together for many years to come. and when we look back on the things we have already done, we can now count the jungles of thailand among the ranks of clotted cream and tyra banks.

hitting a wall.

when i was in grade three my class did a unit on china. this was with my very favourite elementry school teacher, ms. marie tait, and she led us through a fascinating discovery of this far away land. we made chinese passports out of red construction paper and had to get them stamped in the hallway before coming into class each morning. we made noodles with peanut sauce in the staff room kitchen. we gasped when we heard about an emporer who had his soldiers entombed- still breathing!- along with him. and we learned about the great wall.

the great wall of china is one of those places, one of those things, that everyone knows about. maybe you saw it in 'mulan'. maybe you dream of going there. maybe you know that it is the only man-made structure visible from space (though that, in fact, is false. guess you learn something new every day). whatever you know, you know something. chris and i both knew dribs and drabs about this giant fence, but like most phenomenons and wonders of the world, you simply can't prepare yourself for what is coming. we thought we knew, but really, how could we?

after a bleary-eyed 5:00am wake up, a three hour, knuckle-whitening minibus ride, two police checkpoints (replete with machine guns and shifty eyes), and one driver who spoke perhaps less english than we spoke mandarin, we arrived at the drop-off point for our trek along the simatai great wall. chris, ever the optimist, was certain that it was all a scam and that we wouldn't actually get to set foot on the wall. fortunately, we did. and fortunately isn't a strong enough word.

there have been moments in my travels when i have been brought close to tears by the sheer wonderment of what i am experiencing. the stars on fraser island. standing under jim jim falls. and standing on the great wall of china, turning to the west and seeing the crumbling stone of a centuries-old wall snaking its way over lush green hills, the low-hanging mist laying like a blanket over the horizon. the wall is old- it smells old, it feels old, it is dilapidated in places and terrifyingly exposed in others. we thought we would be going for a leisurly stroll along a raised footpath. instead we were scrambling up incredibly steep ascents, wobbling on whisper-thin ledges, slipping on the well-worn steps. sweating. exhausted. scared, perhaps, in some moments at least. but exhilarated. joyful. overwhlemed by the scope, the magnitude of what we were, if only for a moment, a part of. we were on the great wall of china for pete's sake. and we loved it.

our time in beijing was an experience to say the least. there were parts of it that threatened to sometimes tip the see-saw towards unpleasant- the unrelenting smog, the eternal noise of the snarling traffic, getting lost on the way to tian'anmen square, bean curd - but then we went to the great wall. and then everything was, well, great.

a world away from the world away

it is 5:02 pm here in sydney. in a few short hours i will be in the air en route to china. somehow this day has arrived both incredibly suddenly and after painfully slow build-up. i am feeling the same feelings i felt in toronto right before i left in february: "what on earth am i doing? i know nothing about where i'm going or what i'm getting myself into!" but instead of a slightly gripping terror, these thoughts now inspire a gleeful excitement. i have no clue what the next ten weeks hold. and i can't wait to find out.

the only thing is that the beginning of my trip to asia also marks, more or less, the end of my time here in australia. i haven't quite managed to fit my head around that yet. my life in australia has become just that- my life. i walk right, stand left. i surf. i sometimes think about eating vegemite. i don't, but at least i think about it. much as henry higgins grew accustomed to eliza doolittle's face, i've grown accustomed to this place. and i've grown accustomed to my place in this world, this upside-down world where people go barefoot on city streets and places have silly names like nuriootla and banka banka. i've had a truly wonderful time here so far. it really is a beautiful country. and the sky- you must come see the sky here.

that's what i'll miss the most. not tim tams, not flip flops in winter, not 'home and away' the aussie soap that sheila's got me wrapped up in. i'll miss the sky more than anything.

sunset over the beach at byron bay.

i'm byron my time.

there are some places in the world where you arrive and want to leave immediately. buffalo, for one. an outlet mall. a pauly shore revue. and then there are places where you arrive, take one long, sweeping look around and immediately start trying to figure out how you can stay here longer. byron bay is one of those kind of places.

byron is a little contry town near the queensland-new south wales border, about an hour south of surfer's paradise. it is the eastern-most point in mainland australia and is bordered to the north by the ancient peaks of a centuries-old volcano. the beach ambles along for ages and the surf rolls in with a steady purpose, breaking off the just-visible mast of a rusted shipwreck just offshore. the sun rises in the east and sets brilliantly in the west, just like everywhere else. for all intents and purposes it sounds just like any other australian coastal town. but there is something different here.

there are no highrise buildings. there are no mcdonald's or hungry jacks. people have surfboard carriers on the side of their bikes and walk a bit slower here. the community is adamant about avoiding the creeping commercialism that seeks to turn all of the east coast into one giant highrise daytona beach party town. but it is more than the architecture of the city, even more than the free range-eating, earthtone-clad, djembe-playing citizens of this hippie mecca. the air is different, the time seems to wander forward, almost accidentally towards the next day, not fussed about what happens along the way. and people smile at each other on the street, cars let you cross with a nod of the head. you get the sense that the city has taken a collective deep breath. it's easy to be here.

you get the distinctive sense that byron is a place that people get stuck, not in a bad way at all, but stuck by their own choosing. my friend hannah described it as such:

"it's like regular, everyday people like you and me, people with jobs and lives and responsibilities somewhere else in the world arrived here and decided that they just needed to stay. and they thought, 'hmm, what can i do to make a living here? what am i good at? well, i'm really good at making windchimes. i think i'll open a windchime store!' or 'i've always wanted to be a lacto-ovo vegetarian contortionist- i think i'll stay here and do animal-friendly street theatre!' and they've just stayed and stayed."

it's true in many ways. the streets are full of second-hand book shops, crystal sellers offering to draw a portrait of you as a mythical fairy, beadworks shops and countless hemp clothing retailers. it is a city of dreadlocks and bare feet, campervans and herbal teas. it is everything kensington market wants so desperately to be and isn't quite. it is authentic and virtually free of any trace of pretentious, holier-than-thou self-righteousness. vegans dot the footpaths but don't sneer at you when you emerge from the kebab stand, your pita dripping with lamb. it's a community in the strongest sense of the word, a community of people who love this place and want to keep it as special as it is. and they are nice enough to share it with others.

i know it sounds a bit kumbaya-ish. i always thought of myself as a city boy through and through, the kind of person who would cast a cynical eye at a place like this. but after a day of surfing the brilliant blue waves, drink freshly sqeezed orange juice in the park, and watching the sunset paint the clouds in brilliant technicolour, you start to think about things a bit differently. you start to think, "hell, i've always thought that papier mache is a lost art. i wonder what i could do with that..."

freefalling

when you are young there are many things that you are taught that you do not do. my mom was particularly adamant about three things: never eat lying down, never run with a lollypop in your mouth, and stay the hell out of the way when hot water is coming though. i'm sure your family had its own set of things you certainly musn't do- lick an icy pole in winter perhaps. run with scissors. try to drown your neighbour caitlin under the kitchen sink. you know, things like that. and i'm sure if it had come up, there would have been a rule that went something like this: if someone asks you to willingly climb into a tiny plane, strap yourself to a complete stranger, fly to 14, 000 feet and then jump out of said plane, you do not do it.

and you certainly do not pay to do.

well, call me a renegade, call me a rule-breaker, but i simply couldn't come to cairns in northern queensland and keep both feet on the ground for the entirety of my visit. so i shelled out the cash and crossed my fingers. i boarded a bus with a crew of, and i use this term very loosely, professionals and we drove the hour out of the city to the drop zone. i pulled on the red and yellow jumpsuit pants that i can assure you are not going to be gracing the pages of men's vogue anytime soon. and i stepped into a plane about the size of a mini-fridge. and i checked to see if my fingers were still crossed. they were.

up we climbed, like charlie in his great glass elevator, up, up, and away until the farmland below was nothing but verdant patchwork with red dirt stitching. up higher until we were north of the clouds, looking down at a bona fide rainbow painted across the white popcorn floor of the heavens. up higher and higher until we couldn't go any higher and the first jump instructor pried open the plexiglass door. the cold air of 14, 000 feet above earth hit me like a wall. a very cold wall. a very cold, very high up wall. fingers? still crossed.

no time to think though, and before i could pause to feel nervous i was out the door and into the air. into the sky, freefalling for sixty seconds of fully realized elation. i screamed because i couldn't not scream. i laughed because i was flying. i was flying! i tend not to use exclamation marks, but this was an exclamation mark sixty seconds. i could feel the wind tugging at the skin of my face, the pressure of my descent unfolding my arms into a wide open embrace, hugging madly at the air as it rushed past me. and then the startling calm of the air under the open parachute, calm and cavernous. calm, but in mid-air. unreal.

i steered my red parachute towards the ground, turning in corkscrews and wide wheels, laughing with my whole body, wanting to stay up in the air for just one more minute. but feet belong on the ground and i made my way back to the planet. i landed on my feet. i landed smiling.

and somewhere along the line, i had uncrossed my fingers.

things i don't do

here is a list of things that i don't normally do at home:

- sneak into a campsite after hours to avoid paying the fee, then sleep in a tent with two relative strangers and make oatmeal on a barbeque for breakfast
- snuggle into a swag in the outback staring up at one million stars while listening to the not-so-distant howl of the dingo
- jump off waterfalls, swim in waterholes, loll about in thermal springs
- sit in a boat several feet away from giant saltwater crocodiles and feel the slow crawl of absolute terror inching up the back of my neck
- watch the sky turn into a brilliant canvas of purple and orange as the sun sets at uluru, the giant red rock positively glowing in the fading light
- kayak through the depths of katherine gorge looking up at a rock canvas of ancient aboriginal art while learning how to speak korean

these are things that i don't do in toronto. these are also all things i have done recently. to name but a few.

i'm not bragging. at least i hope i'm not bragging. it's just that i almost can't believe this country and what i've been up to since leaving sydney. i want you to come here and do it for yourself. i want you to understand just how immense, how powerful, how beautiful this country is.

and then we can talk about it while we get ready to go tandem skydiving.

adelaide's lament

as of sunday i had been in two of the states of australia. as of yesterday i have been in four. but it might take bit of legwork to get into the fifth on the list.

on sunday i packed up the life i had made for myself in sydney and said a bittersweet farewell to sheila. monday morning i jumped into a van and shared the backseat with a german shephard named jed for the ten hours down to melbourne. from melbourne i met up with the guys i was set to travel all the way through the outback to darwin with: guillaume from brittany, france and michael from tipperary (yes, as in "it's a long way to"). we had a great time driving the snaking, scenic great ocean road and sneaking past the security booth to save on park entry for camping in warrnambol. we spent wednesday trekking in the grampians and then retired to guillaume's friend's giant sheep farm outside of hamilton. the farm was unreal; it is an experience for an entirely different post. last night we rolled into adelaide. and things have come to a bit of an abrupt halt.

guillaume started mentioning the possibility that he would need to spend more time than originally anticipated in adelaide- first three days, then a week, then perhaps up to two weeks or maybe more. a story emerged about some occular disease that he might have because his brother just found out he has it (don't ask me, i don't get it either). and one hour outside of adelaide he announced that he wanted to part ways and find out own way north to darwin. thanks for the heads up.

michael and i are now trying to sort ourselves onto a two week bus journey throught the heart of this massive country. we are trying to haggle ourselves onto the cheapest deal and make the most of our time in adelaide. and adelaide is about as exciting as i imagine saskatoon to be. nothing against saskatoon, but let's call a spade a spade- it certainly isn't the cultural hotspot of canada.

cross your fingers that we get a good deal. while you're at it, you might cross your toes too.

whitsunday in the park with george.

it has been nearly two months since chris was here. in all the time since i haven't written about our trip to the whitsunday islands. i'm not quite sure why. i think it is mainly because it was an experience too wonderful to distill into a cohesive blog post. i feel the same way about my time on fraser island when my dad was here not too long ago. i don't have the words for how perfect those times have been.

this is a picture of me and chris at whitehaven beach. we were one day into our three days at sea with fifteen other passengers and three colourful crew members. we hadn't yet kayaked by mangroves and watched ancient sea turtles gasp for air at the surface of the turquoise water. we hadn't yet stretched out under the blinking night sky and picked out the southern cross from amongst a million stars. we hadn't yet swum face to face with clown and zebra and maori fish. we hadn't yet made friends with a cross-section of travelers from all over the globe and learned that in danish they don't say "cheese!" in photographs because cheese in danish is "ost" and you can imagine what that would look like in a snapshot. we hadn't yet been rocked to sleep by the waves of the pacific and learned to walk around the boat with one hand holding onto something fixed at all times. we were just beginning.

we had a wonderful time. we met lovely people, some of whom we are still in touch with. we saw fantastic things, experienced word-stealing beauty and stomach-turning waves. we had a wonderful time. i wish you could have seen it all.

jam please

chris and i get along. i would hope so, at the very least. sometimes i think that it is much easier to love someone than to like them. luckily, chris and i manage to do both. sometimes i think the liking is made easier by the fact that we are so different.

chris manages to be five minutes early when i breeze in ten minutes late. if a salesperson is rude to us, chris grumbles after the fact while i'm busy asking to speak to the manager. chris is organized; me, i'm a bit more haphazard. and while i consider myself an outgoing person, chris is decidedly shy.

it has taken me time to understand this part of chris's personality. i'm sure he would say that i still don't, really. sure, i have my moments of self-conscious stammering and i can blush when caught unawares. but when it comes down to the nitty-gritty, i am not shy. but i am trying to understand.

chris is shy. chris once slammed his finger in the door of my dad's car and didn't tell anyone so as not to be an inconvenience. when room service didn't tidy our hotel room in montreal a few years ago chris very tellingly asserted, "if we get back and they still haven't cleaned our room, i'm going to call the front desk and be irate! or you are going to call and be irate for me!" when we arrived at a b&b in stratford i couldn't understand why chris so desperately needed me to ring the doorbell instead of him- they couldn't even see us, for heaven's sake! but i am trying to understand. and trying, in my own probably misguided way, to help him to be a little less shy.

and so we found ourselves in australia together, sitting on the patio of a cafe in airlie beach, eating breakfast back in march. we had just completed a wonderful three day boat trip through the stunning whitsunday islands and taken in the splendor of the great barrier reef. and now we were back on dry land and i wanted jam for my toast. and i asked chris if he would be so kind as to run inside and ask the waitress for some jam.

from the reaction i received you might have thought i had asked chris to perform a rhythmic gymnastics routine in the nude at the superbowl halftime show. or sit next to his grandmother and watch a montage of movie sex scenes. you would not think that i had asked him to walk ten paces and ask a stranger for a packet of jelly. please, i implored, it would mean a lot to me if you could do this for me, this one thing, please, just this once. the more i tried to talk him into it, the more firmly chris became rooted to his slatted patio chair. but i wasn't giving up that easy- i was a man on a mission. please, i asked again, i would do the same for you. nevermind that i wouldn't think twice about such a thing. poor chris. it would mean a lot to me if you could do this for me, said in that tone that almost says if you really loved me this wouldn't be an issue.

chris got me the jam. i said thank you and i put it on my toast. we finished our breakfast and went on with our lives, more or less intact.

if anyone ever asks me why i'm with chris, i will say it is because even though it went against ever natural instinct in his body, one time in australia he got me jam.

visa limit.

have you ever tried to get a tourist visa to go to china? i have.

i have tried. and tried. and then i tried again. three straight days of immeasurable frustration interrupted by one actual nightmare. three two hour round trips to the consulate in camperdown, two fruitless encounters with the same visa clerk, one frantic dash to an atm.

fine, i'll take the blame for wednesday's empty-handed venture. what idiot gets within spitting distance of a consulate only to realize that he's left his passport back home on the lower north shore? (for the record, on that same day i also went to the gym with a towel and socks but no shorts. who am i, amelia bedelia?) but i refuse to take the blame for thursday. no where on the website did it say that i must provide a confirmation number as proof of accommodation. when i had asked sally at the far east yha in beijing via email if the letter she drafted for me would be sufficient i got a resounding yes. only to get a resounding no at the visa counter. this after i the bus driver decided not to stop at my stop, forcing my to sprint the three blocks to catch the bus at the next strand, hopping aboard and shooting a filthy look toward the driver's seat. this after i arrived at the front door of the consulate to find the security guard trading profanities and threats with a delivery man who had parked in the wrong place. this after i had made the same trek not twenty-four hours early, walking away empty-handed on both occasions.

so today i showed up, packing a detailed email from our beijing hotel and my brightest smile. only to get shafted again. and told that i needed to speak to the receptionist. and then the supervisor. and then the same visa clerk. for the third time in three days. when i was finally granted the go ahead, i was asked "do you want to pay extra to get this back in a few hours or come back and pick it up next week?"

are you kidding me? come back again? no thank you.

i have a visa now. it is pasted into my passport and grants me access to the giant nation anytime before august 16. that's if i still want to go.

china and i have some making up to do.

countries that start with the letter c

i have been in australia for over three months now. this also means that i have not been in toronto for over three months now. obviously. this is, i have realized, far and away that longest i have ever been away from the city i have called home for nearly twenty-five years. one would expect a certain element of homesickness, and while there are things about home that i certainly miss, i wouldn't say i'm sick about it. (people, well now that's a different story- i miss some people desperately.)

it's funny the things that i do miss. walking past christie pitts to scoop up some mint chocolate chip or german chocolate cake ice cream at baskin robbins. riding my bike along the treacherous stretch of bloor from bathurst to spadina. banjara's veggie combo. my thursday afternoon attack class. twizzlers, which haven't immigrated to australia. paying one (albeit exorbitant) fare to ride the subway for as short or long a distance as i please. my blundstone boots. things like those. it's in the infrequent moments when the canadian inside me all of a sudden wants a tim horton's double-double that i remember how far i am from home.

it was my and chris's trip to southeast asia that brought me to the constant reader, a book store in nearby crow's nest, and found me thumbing through the lonely planet c titles in search of 'cambodia, laos, vietmnam, and the lower mekong'. but it was the part of me that misses home that made me reach past cambodia and cameroon and wrap my hand around the spine of 'lonely planet: canada.' hungrily skimming past british columbia and the prairies, my eyes came to rest on the chapter entitled: ontario. and right there, the first city profiled in the chapter, in all its leafy, semi-self-conscious glory was toronto, my home and native landmass. page after page after page of home.

and so it was that i spent the better part of an hour reading all about the place i've lived since birth. from the eaton centre to centreville, high park to regent park, sassafras to scarborough, it was all there. i loved the recommendation to try the seared tuna salad at utopia, my favourite college street eatery. i scoffed as the travel editors tried to talk up the non-existent charm of our waterfront. i smiled at the mention of kensington, smelling the incense and the smug, holier-than-thou attitude of its denizens. my eye twitched when they directed hipsters to 'west queen west'- don't they know i call it queen west west? but it was all there. yitz's at avenue and eglinton, where i used to gum breadsticks from a sassy seat before i cut my first tooth. edwards gardens, where i poked my curious nine-year-old head into a limousine, just to see if they really were that fancy. beck taxi- need i say more?

i must have cut an odd figure, standing in the middle of the travel section in a country full of newness and difference, lost in the warmth of the familiar. future's bakery. metropasses. goose shit in allen gardens. page after page after page of home.

reason #301 why i love sheila

i love living with sheila. she is easygoing and tidy and intelligent and caring. she sometimes makes delicious curried lamb and shares it with me. she always provides running commentary to keep me up to speed when i join her for an episode of 'home and away', an aussie soap that is her unabashed guilty pleasure. she and i never need the shower at the same time. and she is funny. she makes me laugh pretty much daily, deep down laugh from my belly. she tells circuitous, hilarious stories punctuated with her low register giggle. she regales me with lively tales of her working life most evenings. and she is quick as a whip.

last night she was doing laundry and she had asked me if i had any light coloured items i wanted to toss in. i did. and to be kind, sheila asked, "there are a few darker things in here. are you sure that there's nothing of yours that is too precious?"

"well there is the lost shroud of christ, but other than that..." i said.

and without a moment's hesitation sheila said, "so i'll wash it on gentle then?"

i love her.

cold front

there are few things that i thought canadians could lay true and rightful claim to. poutine, for example. no one in the world does poutine quite the way we do. no one else has the cbc or josee chouinard. and i thought we were head and shoulders above the rest of the planet when it comes to complaining about the weather.

apparently, i thought wrong.

australians are by and large a lovely people. they are sporting and jovial and laid back, for the most part. they have given the world the best olympics in recent memory and produced cate blanchett. they are, i repeat, a lovely people. but they need to get a grip. because 22 degrees celsius is not cold.

there is no such thing as autumn in sydney. as soon as the everyday temperature starts to creep below 25, it is immediately winter in everyone's mind. no slow transition, no gradual layering of clothing as hemlines inch back down to the ankles and sleeves reach toward the wrists. if you can't sleep in boxer shorts and with every window in your house open, it is unequivocally winter and marks the beginning of perpetual griping. stores down george and pitt streets are all full of mannequins hunched into their down vests and striped scarves. people are wearing mittens. and it is 22 and sunny!

when i arrived in february, everyone warned me that it would get cold by june before i left for asia. when i asked what cold is, they told me that sometimes in the dead of night it will get all the way down to 9 degrees. i had to stifle my laughter- when it hits 9 degrees in toronto, everyone pours out onto patios and my uncle ian is already in shorts. here you would think that it was the apocalypse.
everywhere you go you catch someone mumbling about "this damn cold" or "this frightful winter weather." just to give you a bit of perspective on said frightful weather, today i walked to the store in shorts and a polo and right now i'm sitting on my balcony typing this. it is anything but cold.

i guess the aussies deserve some slack. in a country where most provinces enjoy more than 300 days of sunshine a year and where you can go surfing year round, i can concede that 15 degrees might be considered relatively chilly. and just because you never have a real reason to wear a pea coat doesn't mean that you should be denied the right. but if you want to complain about the cold, i think you have to earn the right. you need to wait in an outdoor bus bay in your work shoes as the slush seeps into your socks and freezing wind whips your face. you need to venture about the treeline where -10 is considered balmy. you need to have at least read about the ice storm in quebec and northern ontario, if not weathered it. and it needs to be below zero. those are my conditions.

somehow i don't think that the sydneysiders will go for it. they're too busy bemoaning their lost summer to listen to this crackpot canuck still wearing his flip flops. and i don't know if they will hear me through their earmuffs.

i'm telling you, if you want a laugh come to sydney and watch these strange animals pretending to be cold. it's like watching fourteen-year-olds profess their undying love for each other- people trying desperately to emulate something that they've seen on tv but have no real understanding of.

i just have to say it one more time- 22 is not cold.

mating season

i did it. i can't say i'm proud of myself. i just couldn't resist the pressure any longer. call me weak, call me pathetic, call me traitorous. but i couldn't help myself.

i said "mate."

out loud. to another person. in public. oh dear- this doesn't look good.

when my friend eric returned home from a semester in wales with a serious case of the madonnas, saying "brilliant!" instead of "great" and "mobile" instead of "cell phone," i was among the first to chuckle. brilliant? who says brilliant? you're canadian, remember? those were my thought then. but now- let me say now, to the universe and all who are listening, that i owe eric an apology. because i've mated. and i understand his predicament.

people tend to pick up expressions from friends. families have their own personal lexicons that affect the way you speak, or at least mine does, and you certainly can't watch too many episodes of 'friends' before chandler's inflection starts to creep into your own voice. could you be any other way? so imagine that you're faced with a continual barrage of voices, day in and day out, all heavily accented and peppered with a slang that is almost indecipherable. imagine that every time you say "thank you" it sounds as though it has too many syllables and that it's actually rude to say "what's up?" now try to stand there and not pick up a phrase or two, a slightly new direction on certain vowels, a disappearance of any medial r. suddenly melbourne is melboune and you're saying "ta" when a store clerk hands your your change. if a hundred people a day ask you "how you going?" it's only a matter of time before you, too, won't care how people are doing and would rather know how they are going. one letter- assimilation is that easy.

the slang of sydney is almost an entirely different language. greetings, pleasantries, thanks yous and you're welcomes, everything has a twist. entire words or phrase are missing from the national vocabulary or entirely different. for example, here in australia there really isn't such a thing as a bathing suit. instead there is a swimming costume, or cossie for short. most people just call it a costume. what do you call a costume then, i asked? just like the brits, the aussies would don fancy dress for halloween, not a costume. well then what on earth would you call an actual fancy dress, i asked, my incredulity mounting. i'm still waiting for an answer on that. another thing- people here aren't as happy as a clam- it's nothing against mollusks, they're just too busy being as happy as larry. i asked sheila who this blissful larry is and was told that it is derived for the word larrikin, a term for a person who is carefree and not fussed with the opinions of others. who knew? i though they might have been talking about the stooge. or larry flint. one of the two. people also consistently talk about getting the shits, and quite publicly at that. what they mean to say is that they got pissed of/are angry about something. for the most part it has nothing to do with their gastro-intestinal systems.

so you can understand how different the speech is here. most of the time i'm just trying to keep up. so i hope you can forgive me the occasional slip of the tongue and won't hold it against me if i ring you instead of call you or stuff it instead of screw up. try not to get the shits- i'm just trying to make a go of it here mate.

surf's up

there are many things you might want to hear when you arrive at your first surf lesson. "you look like you're going to be a natural" or "has anyone ever told you that you are breathtaking in this light?" would be nice. right?

"it's going to be really tough going out there today. just so you know."

that's what i got. followed immediately by being asked to sign a waiver wherein i waived all basic legal, human, and civil rights. comforting, to say the least. but i was there and i was surfing come hell or high water. and believe me when i say that there certainly was high water.

australia is a nation that surfs. children in canada are strapped on to cheese-cutters and dragged onto ice rinks, cushions strapped to bums, chairs gripped desperately in front of them. it's part of the national identity. here the midwife cuts the cord, announces the sex of the baby and then the wee thing is plopped on a surfboard and sent out into the briny drink. i'm convinced that most australians have learned how to surf before they know how to print their own name and certainly before they can understand that having one ten dollar bill is actually more than having six pennies. in short, they surf. all of them. the country is ideally located for it and the climate means that you can grab your board and hang ten for twelve months a year. so there's no reason why they shouldn't surf. and so they do. and so, i decided, would i.

i don't know why i waited so long to force my limbs into a damp wetsuit and try my luck at riding the waves. i think mainly i wanted someone i knew really well to do it with, but chris and i never got around to it and i didn't want to wait until my dad showed up. so i decided to bravely soldier forth alone.

i woke up two tuesdays ago to a stormy sky and a pissing drizzle. i didn't remember the weather being quite like this for paul walker and jessica alba's blue bikini in 'into the blue.' but what do i know?- i never saw the movie. i had the day off and had booked a lesson and i promised myself that i wouldn't back down. "tomorrow i could lose my legs in a horrible wiffle-ball accident and then i would really regret not going surfing today," i thought, and who wants to regret anything? so i scurried out into the rain to catch the bus to manly beach. i'm not kidding- it poured rain for the entire bus ride to the beach. cats and dogs rain. end of a romantic comedy rain. blame it on the rain rain.

but then- somehow, for some reason- i stepped off the bus at the manly corso and the skies began to clear. blue showed up on the horizon and the world looked impossibly more cheerful. and i was feeling quite confident. and then i saw the ocean.

a southern front had blown in the day before and brought with it a relentless and unforgiving surf that made me stop in my tracks. these waves were big. no messing around here. and then i arrived at the surf school to be greeted by shawn, the instructor, with his confidence-inspiring welcome. to be fair, he was only being honest and wanted us to have a realistic idea of what we were in for. we would have to paddle hard to get out, he told me and the one other dedicated (read: stupid) guy in the lesson, and we would be facing bigger waves than normal. but we were going.

surfing lessons are a funny thing because there really can't be too much of a beginner's level. there is no such thing as a bunny ocean. no rope tow to get you out there. no training wheels, no safety net. no cheese-cutters. you practice on the beach and get the pleasure of looking quite ridiculous for those around you, paddling through sand and repeatedly trying to drop your hips and slide your feet up just so. but beach practice can only teach you so much. like fish tanks and waterslides, surfing is something you just need h2o to do right. and so out into the sea we went, turning our faces against the onslaught of the pounding rollers, pressing our bodies up and our weight down to keep our boards on their course out to- hopefully- catch our very first wave.

imagine my great excitement when i popped up onto my board, found my footing, and coasted all the way into the shore on my very first wave. now i'm not bragging- well wait, i think i might be bragging. but deal with it. award me this moment of self-satisfaction. i got up. i got up on a difficult day on my very first try. i was happy- goofy grin happy, sally field's 'places in the heart' oscar speech happy. and more than happy- i was hooked.

i spent the rest of the lesson figuring out how to finesse the waves a bit more, how to steer with my eyes, my arms, and my feet all at the same time, how to ride the rip out to make the paddling easier. i realized why all the surfers have unbelievably ripped bodies- because it is genuinely exhausting work and requires a lot of core strength to keep your balance and a fair bit of upper body work as well. i used to scoff when cameron diaz would chalk her lean physique up to surfing. yeah right, i would think, i bet you're chew-and-spitting your food. but no, surfing will work wonders. cameron wasn't lying.

i have been back since and hope to go again before i head to brisbane to meet my dad on wednesday. and when we get to brisbane, do you know what the first thing i want to do is? i'll give you one guess.

(not me- yet)

star system.

australia and canada are not unlike each other. we are both big, giant countries. we are both at once internationally adored and internationally ignored. we are polite and tidy and relatively inoffensive. and we both like to claim our stars.

every canadian knows which hollywood star is a true canuck- we know who has flattened their vowels and bleached their hair and teeth in order to make a name for themselves in the pantheon of american celebrity. we are proud to call pamela anderson our own (though really, should we be? i wouldn't be too fussed to let america claim her). we all boast that ellen page, breakout star of 2007, hails from the great white north. jim carrey, mike myers, rachel mcadams? with glowing hearts they've seen thee rise. and we're holding on for dear life, hoping that if enough canadians make a solid name we might finally begin to develop our own independent international presence.

this is something shared by the aussies. they like to lay claim to their stars just as much as we do. cate blanchett, hugh jackman, kylie minogue- they are huge here and everyone is desperate to make sure the world knows that they are australian. when i arrived two months ago the country was plastered with newspaper cover stories devoted to mourning the loss of their very own heath ledger. everyone stays very up-to-date on the goings-on of their homegrown talent and like a proud and only slightly overbearing stage mother, they are more than willing to boast their connections or intimate knowledge of said celebrities.

two such instances have caught my attention. the first is about russell crowe. the pool where i work looks out at wooloomooloo bay (seriously, that's the name) and there are some very posh lofts built on the pier across the water from us. the penthouse unit at the end of the wharf has a spectacular view of the harbour through its floor to ceiling windows, a million dollar view if ever their was one. i have been told countless times by people at the pool, both employees and customers, that that is the australian home of russell crowe, his wife danielle and their son tennyson. if i got a telescope i could tell you what colour his tea towels are. last night when i was leaving work the lights were on and i could see figures moving around. russell?

the pool complex also has a yoga studio within it and i have gotten to know one of the instructors, waran. waran was telling me how he does private coaching for the conductor of the sydney orchestra and i mentioned how that must come with some sort of bragging rights. and he said, "well, if i wanted to brag, i could brag about being nicole's private yoga instructor." as in nicole kidman-cruise-urban. waran and nicole, just hanging out in downward dog. as i said to my friend jason, only sometimes does she wear the virginia woolf prosthetic nose.

these people are proud of their celebrities. and i say let them be proud. and let me do hot yoga with nicole while you're at it.

of note.

my dad is coming to visit in a few short weeks. since he is flying around the country before ending up in sydney, i am going to meet him in brisbane and then we are going to see what kind of nonsense we can get up to. i am thrilled and excited- my dad and i have never traveled just the two of us and it will be an experience unlike anything we've shared.

so i've been looking up flights from brisbane to sydney- domestic flights are remarkably affordable in australia, almost unbelievably cheap sometimes. even international flights are obscene: i found a flight from singapore to darwin, australia for $38. $38! that, my friend, is what you call a deal. anyhow, virgin blue is one such budget airline and as i was nosing around their site i decided to read the terms and conditions of carriage. it was all rather routine, though the following struck me as quite humorous:

"the only item that can occupy a seat (other than a guest of course) is a cello. to book an extra seat for your cello please call the guest contact centre."

i love this. i think my favourite part is that the airline feels the need to clarify that a cello is the only thing other than a guest of course. as if there would be an airline that only filled its seats with string instruments, airbuses with row upon row of celli destined for the travel hotspots of the nation. the stradivarius would fly first class of course.




i have booked my flight to brisbane for april 23. i selected my seat (10d), on the aisle with an empty seat to my right. i'm crossing my fingers for a viola.

mail order.

we live in an age of rapid change. i like email and all that, but i am slightly disconcerted by the fact that my children will not know what a roll of film is. "what's this?" they'll ask with the same incredulity i reserved for spinning wheels and the giant maroon-rimmed glasses my father got married in. the future is here, one day at a time.

the breakneck pace of technological evolution has seen some worthy casualties. the discman, for one, seems to have accepted its demise at the hands of the ipod generation. toaster ovens appear to have disappeared. and the handwritten letter is, sadly, a relic of a bygone era.

there are few things as exciting as a letter in the mail, particularly one from someone you know and love. something about seeing your name written above the address where you live makes you feel as though you might have a place to call your own in this big old universe. it means that someone took the time to buy a stamp. it means that they even know your postal code. that's love right there. knowing someone's postal code off by heart means they are in you life in the most unavoidable way.

my postal code here is 2068. my name above the place where i live in australia is this:

brian rieper
16/2 artarmon rd
willoughby, nsw
australia
2068

in case you were wondering. or in case you were feeling nostalgic and wanted to slip ace of base's "the sign" into your sony shockwave, drop a pop tart in the toaster over, and lay your pen to a piece of paper. just for old time's sake.

blue mountain blues.

before chris arrived in sydney i made a list of things that we simply had to do while he was here. this list included standard fare like the opera house and bondi beach and then some more personal things like going to the ben sherman store on market street and eating ferrero rocher gelato in newtown. i also decided to ask all the locals for their suggestions for things that are not to be missed, namely the "one thing i must do with chris." and indubitably the answer came back "you must see the blue mountains."

the blue mountains are northwest of the city and form somewhat of the western edge of the greater sydney area. they are not so much mountains as they are a giant range of cavernously deep gorges cut into the sandstone landscape, blanketed with lush and vibrant vegetation, ribboned with cascading waterfalls. the plentiful eucalyptus trees that dot the hills emit a certain oil into the air and when the sun hits said oil the mountains appear to be giving off a blue aura. and so the mountains have their name.

chris arrived in sydney eager to see the mountains- i had told him how much everyone raved about them and of course he google imaged them until he, too, was sufficiently enamored. but the first week he was here the sun was too perfect not to go to the beach and then we were off to the whitsundays for a jaunt. upon our return to the city we had three full days left and our number one destination was the blue mountains, which had by this point taken on an almost mythical quality. we were going, come hell or high water. but the high water came the next day in the form of rain and so we decided to push back our travels until the next day, saturday, chris's second last day in the city.

we awoke before 6 a.m. and trekked through the foggy early morning to catch the train that would take us to katoomba, the whimsically named city that borders the blue mountains. to drive from sydney to the blue mountains takes roughly 45 minutes; the train ride, on the other hand, takes nearly three hours. we both slept for most of the trip but then i awoke as we chugged along, further from the city and further into an ever-thickening fog. i started to feel the tiniest bit apprehensive about our exciting day trip. we were headed to what is championed as one of the most beautiful vistas in new south wales and if this fog didn't burn off soon... let's just say that it wouldn't be good. (i feel i should let you know that i very seriously considered writing "we were headed to what is championed as one of the most beautiful vistas in new south wales and if this fog didn't burn off soon... well, it was going to be hasta la vistas, baby." just thought you should know.)

and so we arrived in katoomba to a steady, miserable drizzle with exactly one umbrella and zero raincoats between us. i at least had a hood on my sweatshirt. chris had- well, he had me for company. and we had fog. there was plenty of fog. but we were there and to hell if we were going down without a fight. somehow we had enough remaining optimism between us to hope, to please god hope that we would at least be able to see something. so we began the twenty minute trek down to the first lookout to see the three sisters (not, as you might imagine, chekhov's play of the same name but rather three towering sandstone turrets. just wanted to avoid confusion.) three minutes into the walk my socks were officially soaked. ten minutes into the walk chris turned to me and said, "just so you know i am about thirty seconds from turning around and getting back on a train to sydney. i need you to talk me down from the ledge." eighteen minutes into the walk we found a coffee shop that also sold $2 rain ponchos of the 'garbage bag with armholes and a hood' variety and may i just say that they are not only comfortable but also the epitome of high fashion. twenty minutes into the walk we arrived at the lookout. and so we looked out.

i must break to show you what the view from the three sisters lookout is on any moderately sunny or clear day.
pretty, isn't it? it looks untouched and sweeping and transporting, all the things a view of the mountains should be. however, when chris and i arrived at the edge of the very same canyon where that picture was taken, this is what we saw:
in case you were wondering, that is fog. that is not a sheet of cloudy gray paper. it is not an image we created on microsoft paint. that is what we saw from the gateway to the most exquisite mountain range in new south wales. fog.

while i can't say anything for the view of the mountains, i do have a lot too say about the view of the fog. it was quite a thing to behold in its own way- the sheer density of it was not to be believed. it was quite literally as if someone had taken a geographical eraser and removed whatever lay more than ten feet in front of us. the world beyond the edge of our side of the mountains ceased to exist- the three sisters really could have been chekhov's play for all we know. at one point while walking through one of the trails chris and i could hear a rushing waterfall directly below us- but we couldn't see it. a waterfall! it was completely swallowed by the fog. no matter how hard we strained our eyes or how far we zoomed our cameras there was naught to behold.

we could have cried. we could have sulked. we could have nastily blamed each other and been petty and miserable. but instead we decided to make the best of what we had. and we had a lovely day. we took a long, meandering walk through the rainforest-like greenery that borders the canyon. we snapped photos of the katoomba cascades and jumped through massive puddles. we kept remarking, "can you imagine how beautiful it must be from here when there isn't any fog?" we schlepped back up to katoomba several hours later, mud-splattered and drenched and tucked into meat pies and warm drinks in a charming little cafe. we read the travel section of the saturday paper and through about where else we could go to not see the view.

on the three hour train ride back toward the city and dry shoes the fog miraculously began to lift. by the time we arrived home in willoughby we were told by sheila that it had been a beautiful day in sydney. hardly seems fair, really. and so if anyone ever asks me if it's true that the blue mountains are really the one thing that they must see when they come to sydney i know how i will answer them. "don't ask me," i will say, "i haven't the foggiest."

will you look at that view!

no skin off my nose.

i look like my dad. this is not an opinion- this is a fact. people who know my father but who have never met me will come up to me and say, "you must be ralph's son." our faces line in exactly the same way when we smile. our eyes are almost the same blue. it must be said that i have inherited an awful lot from my dad.

i have also inherited other, non-physical traits as well: the way i sigh, my enjoyment of red wine and potato chips (not necessarily at the same time), and, unfortunately for most, my father's pool brat tendencies. put my father near water and he immediately becomes devilish and remorseless, an unpredictable hooligan. i have a distinct memory of him pulling our good family friend joanne into a backyard pool while she was fully clothed and in heels. my dad once flipped a paddleboat with my mom in it (for the record- have you ever tried to flip a paddleboat? it ain't easy brother). my mom did not find this quite as entertaining as my dad did. you can't stand on a dock or on the side of a pool when my dad is around and not get mercilessly tossed, pulled, or flipped into the water. and i must say the same is to be said for me.

let me make this clear- neither of us are a pool bully; we're not in it to drown. we are rather pool brats. if you ask me, we're not in it for harm or hurt, we're in it solely for fun. a good time, a laugh, a charming anecdote to go along with the occasional scar or bruise. however, if you ask my sister, who has bravely born the brunt of this behavior for just shy of twenty years, she might sing a different song. actually, she probably won't sing in front of you, but she will certainly offer a different perspective.

this trait inspires a kind of reckless abandon in the water, one that applies not only to my interaction with others but also to my own actions. and believe me when i say that i have been burned before. i have felt the horrifying sting of a front flip off a metres-high boathouse gone terribly awry. i have been smacked in the face by canoes, surf boards, pool noodles, sea turtles, lighthouses, and one mermaid who looked remarkably like darryl hannah in 'splash.' once i wiped out spectacularly whilst water skiing and smashed the handle so hard across my thighs that i had a perfectly straight bruise for the rest of the summer. but somehow i just never learn. these are not the moments i remember.

had i remembered them i might have been more cautious when chris and i were in the whitsunday islands two weeks ago. i might have thought back to more disastrous instances when we got to whitehaven beach with the pure silicone sand and the spectacular surf. i might have remembered my mistakes when we trounced into the crashing waves to body surf. had i remembered my past i might have been more careful, i might not have climbed onto a huge barnacle covered rock emerging from the ocean and posed for snapping cameras on the beach on my perilous perch, and i most certainly would not have dived off the rock, face first into the very shallow water. i would not have scraped the skin off most of the bridge of my nose and part of my forehead and would not have spent my time in one of the beautiful places in the world being photographed with a giant wound smack dab in the middle of my face. i would not have had to continually disinfect it with betadine, an iodine-based liquid that left my nose a lovely shade of orange so that i looked not unlike gonzo the muppet. i would not have been asked by everyone on the boat, "what did you do to your nose?" none of it would have happened were i not such a giant pool brat.

alas, we are born as we are. some are born redheaded, some are born eunuchs. i was born a pool brat and i will likely be this way until my dying day. so i guess i am deserving of temporary disfigurement.

who's the bigger pool brat you ask, me or my dad? right now i would have to say it might be me. by a nose.

oatmeal for one.

for fifteen days, chris was here in sydney with me. fifteen glorious days, almost all sunny, all of them made immeasurably better by being together. and now chris is no longer in sydney.

chris and i fell into a routine of starting our days with breakfast on my front verandah in the early morning sun: oatmeal, fresh fruit, maybe a flat white coffee from the cafe at the end of the drive, a glass of a mixed fruit cocktail referred to simply as "brekky juice." plans for the day would unfold, one spoonful at a time. perhaps a gecko would dart across the patio. perhaps there would be a newly ripe kumquat on the tree. it was just wonderful.

yesterday chris boarded air canada flight ac34 from sydney to toronto, departing australia at 12:30pm and somehow, after twenty-two hours in the air, returning to canada by 5:30pm. neat trick. tuesday is just beginning now and he is on his way back to work.

this morning i measured out one serving of oatmeal. just one.

it was wonderful to have chris here. i realize how lucky i am that he could come over here. but i still don't like eating my oatmeal alone.

a night at the opera.

tonight chris and i went to see la boheme at the sydney opera house. the show was just fine, if not predictable- you know the character with the cough isn't likely to meet a happy end in an opera. but the show was extraneous. we were inside the sydney opera house.

there are people who don't like the opera house, who think that it is tacky or overrated or simply too white. i, however, think that it is breathtaking. stunning. it is magnetic, pulling you closer, forcing you to look just once more to see if it really can be that beautiful. and tonight i was inside it, inside of one of the most recognizable and celebrated buildings in the world.

before the show began we stepped out onto the north veranda to sip a glass of champagne and take in the harbour at sunset. why? because we could.

i assure you it was lovely. if you ever come to sydney, you must go to the opera. you needn't see the show even; but you must stand on the edge of the world's most famous concert hall and marvel at the beauty of the world's most lovely harbour. you simply must.

you got my back?

traveling alone has been an interesting experience. to say the least. chief among the things i have realized are how many day to day activities require another person.

i am fine on my own. let me say that again- i am most certainly fine on my own. i am enjoying time to myself, the eagerness with which i talk to anyone who will have me, the long hours to get acquainted with the music of the streets and yael naim. but there are certain things you simply need another person for.

conversation, for example. it is hard, though not impossible, to have a conversation by yourself. it is exceeding hard to do so without drawing a certain negative attention to yourself. it is also hard to be the photo-snapping, finger-pointing, "look, they have 7-11 in sydney!" kind of tourist on your own. there are countless day-to-day things that are much harder to do on your own. play pat-a-cake. walk hand in hand. ride a tandem bike. the argentine tango. and a million more, including putting sunscreen on your back.

i never realized just how much i take for granted that extra set of hands when it's time to slather on my spf 30. when you have someone there, there is always a complaint: "you have sand on your hands!" or "the sunscreen is too cold!" or "that's not how my birth mother does it!" but take those hands away and i'm singing a whole different song- and an exasperating song at that. there is nothing romantic about putting sunscreen on your own back, nor is there anything graceful or easy about it. your arms are never quite long enough. you always miss that hard to reach spot under your scapula- even if you use the spray bottles. i have almost dislocated my shoulder on several occasions, creating silhouettes that would shame those nine-year-old asian contortionist in cirque du soliel. all in the name of uv protection. five weeks of this nonsense and i was, suffice it to say, a mite tired of it.

you can imagine my great delight when chris arrived this sunday past. forget that he had narrowly escaped being detained indefinitely in toronto due to the snowstorm. forget that we hadn't seen each other in over a month. forget that i would have a traveling companion and someone to tour through the life i'm making for myself here. forget that. what really mattered is that i would finally- finally!- have someone to do my back. thank goodness.

chris and i are having a lovely time together here in sydney, thanks for asking. the weather has been impossibly good and our days have been filled with adventure and gelato. yesterday we walked the shore from bondi beach to bronte beach, something so beautiful that i would feel content if my trip ended tomorrow. tomorrow we will get on a plane and fly up the east coast to airlie beach where we will spend three days sailing the whitsunday islands and diving on the great barrier reef. yes, we are having a lovely time indeed.

and through it all, chris has been there, ready for conversation, doubles tennis matches, and the countless times i turn to him and ask, ever so humbly, "will you do my back?"

please don't take my sunshine away.

once upon a time i was a fastidious blogger. and then it got sunny. and then i was less fastidious.

can you blame me for being in the sun while i can? it is perilously difficult to blog and swim at the same time. i also have to plug the broadband cable into my laptop to access the internet and while the cable is generous in length i somehow don't think that it will stretch to manly beach. and so i have been neglectful of this blog. so sue me.

when i arrived in sydney the weather was only okay. i didn't make a big deal of this for three reasons: firstly, i knew that most people back home wouldn't believe that the weather wasn't that great as everyone assumes that sydney is perpetually sunny; secondly, i knew that whatever i had here would most certainly be warmer than toronto; and finally, i didn't want to ruin the impression that i am having the time of my life as so many people are assured that i am having. and so when it rained i opened my umbrella and shut my mouth.

i arrived in early february to be greeted by the coldest ferbuary sydney has seen since 1957. more than half a century of glorious summers, then i show up in my shorts and flip-flops and all anyone can talk about is how bad the weather has been. this is not to say that the weather was even all that bad- a few rainy days and a higher than normal percentage of gray skies but nothing to start knitting about. and i didn't really mind. i still found my way to the pools and the beaches on the days where the sun shone and even somehow managed to get sunburned on the inside of my left knee. so rest assured there was some sun. and i was fine with it all.

but then. then-

just over two weeks ago the skies shifted. the clouds went- well, somewhere else and the sun cranked it up a few. and i went outside and never looked back.

there are precious few things that feel better than the warmth of sun on your face. i know i say this to a city buried beneath a ceaseless snow, a city whose back aches from shoveling and whose lips are chapped. i say this from a city that is alive under the blazing heat of a tropical sun, whose face is turned skyward and whose smile is widening day by day. i wish you were warm with me. it feels so good.

so please forgive me my negligence. the sun and i have been making up for lost time.

fright club.

i got a haircut today. it was fine, thanks for asking. but i won't back to karen at hair by; she was a bit too rough with her thinning scissors for my taste and she wasn't quite as precise as i would have hoped. her loss, or at least i would like to think.

i returned home from the hairdressers with that awful itchy hair all over your body feeling that often occurs post-trim. no thank you. so i promptly shed my shirt and shorts to avoid the itchiness. and then went to make lunch in my undies. why not? sheila wasn't home and no one can see into our house and well really, i don't care. it was noon on a hot wednesday and the need for excess clothing was minimal at best.

so i was staring into the open fridge contemplating whether or not i wanted to put some red pepper spread on my sandwich when i heard a very clear "how you going?" from just outside the kitchen. there are very few things that are quite as startling as hearing someone when you thought you were alone- perhaps touching an inanimate object and having it move or realizing that you have grabbed a stranger's hand in place of your parent's. terrifying. and so i reacted accordingly. with a shriek to the high heavens and a jump that would make barishnikov proud. i think i just about made it into the butter keeper.

sheila of course found it hysterical. as did i. as did sheila's good friend kath. and her nine week old puppy. i have now met kath twice, once in my bathing suit and once in my calvin kleins. as carrie bradshaw would say, "i'm like friggin annie get your clothes on."

sheila has decided that she will now loudly announce herself upon arriving in the front hall. not necessary, but thank you sheila.

i have decided that i must find a way to accidentally-on purpose scare her by arriving with many guests. when she is wearing just a wetsuit or a tutu or a bunny costume. just to be fair.

name that blue.

sydney is a city painted blue- blue everywhere. i am running out of ways to describe all of blues that make up my daily landscape here.

i can't talk enough about the sky- the brilliantly clear azure sky, the hazy white-blue sky, the eternal cobalt big top that billows over this city. the sky goes on forever. the blue of it is enough to break your heart. honestly. it is that perfect.

when i was on the bus across the bridge today the water colouring the harbour was the most brilliant indigo. blue like the crayola blue of a kindergarten seascape. finger paint blue. irresistibly blue. sapphire if you're fancy. the people who make up names for paint colours must come to sydney when they're naming blues (big sur, wisteria, calypso).

the city buses. the school uniforms. the flags. the denim shorts. the eyes. blue blue blue blue blue.

perfect.

the view from balmoral beach. just a little blue.

happy mareh iraq!

predictive text is a funny thing. an inconsistent know-it-all, you might say. like that girl in your third year women, power, and politics tutorial who was pretty smart but said "like" way too often to be taken totally seriously. "female circumcision is, like, not an issue we can rightfully condemn from a western standpoint." something like that.

anyway- predictive text. for all the convenience it offers the scribe of the text, it is undeniably frustrating at times. "tell of he you are going to be good tonight." i'm sorry? i think you meant "tell me if you are going to be home tonight." predictive text does not know that i am named brian and prefers to tell me that my name is asian. it offers a unique signature, that's for certain. "love, asian."

the reason i bring this up is because it was mardi gras here this weekend. mardi gras is the australian gay and lesbian festival- down under pride, one might say. i was texting home to my friend chad to tell him that it was mardi gras and my cell phone told me instead that it was mareh iraq. well if you say so. i found it funny, if only because my phone seemed to think the average australian would write mareh more often than mardi. mareh isn't even in the dictionary- trust me, i looked! what one earth is a mareh?

so anyway- mardi gras. this saturday night past sydney got its glitter on to celebrate thirty years of mardi gras and i was there, smack dab in the middle of it all, to see how sydney's biggest tourist draw stacks up against toronto's big gay street party. here are my main observations- musings, if you will:

- toronto pride and syndey mardi gras are like night and day- seriously. while the toronto parade kicks off under the blistering sun at 2pm, the sydney parade doesn't start until the sun sets just before 8pm. this means that the parade begins and ends with fireworks, people feel justified in wearing glow bracelets, and there is no shame in drinking right from the get-go.

- speaking of drinking- any rules about public consumption of alcohol seem to fly straight out the proverbial window with the arrival of mardi gras. i have never seen so much unabashed public drunken tomfoolery in my life- and i went to theatre school, so that's saying quite a bit. everyone is drinking. in the streets. and rambunctious. and sloppy and a bit wild, which is somewhat surprising for a city that has a reputation for being so well behaved. i saw two men nearly end their own lives by getting into a shopping cart at the top of a very tall hill- that was also a road- with moving traffic- and ask a third friend to let go and let them careen downwards to what i can only imagine would have been a very painful end. a policeman stopped them. thankfully. though i won't pretend i wasn't the tiniest bit curious to see what would happen.

- the parade was fine, but like the parade in toronto once you've seen one you might as well have seen them all. there's only so many times you can cheer for the lesbian ladies lawn bowling association (i'm serious). and dykes on bikes are- shockingly- still dykes on bikes here. and topless men dance in wee shorts. and kylie minogue plays on repeat. people cheer for the anglicans for equal rights for differently-abled transsexuals and boo for the conservative politicians trying to show they really care. but where sydney really does have toronto beat is in the choreography. every marching group- anglicans, lesbians, and all- have choreographed dance routines to take them through the entire parade route. there are many things in life that i love (entertainment weekly, my family, brown sugar, and folding laundry to name a few) and chief among them is a good old fashioned choreographed dance routine. factor in cheering crowds, flashy costumes, and the occasional rhythmic gymnastics ribbon and it's almost better than the finale of bring it on. almost. toronto needs to get its act together and tell the peel region pflag chapter to start practicing their steps- june will be here before we know it!

- the thing that struck me most of all was how much of a mess mardi gras made. i have never seen so much garbage on the streets in my life- empty bottles, cigarette packs, abandoned milk crates people had stood on to watch the parade, flyers for the newest ultra club, free condoms, snakes and ladders, filing cabinets, seventeen pairs of tap shoes, and a well-thumbed copy of erica jong's groud-breaking 1973 erotic novel "fear of flying." more or less. but the city streets were gross and made me feel quite sorry for the maintenance workers faced with cleaning up after hundreds of thousands of careless revellers. i made sure to throw my bottles in the recycling thank you very much.

and so mardi gras came and went. i ended up in a bar on oxford street where i somehow bypassed the $30 cover charge to dance with some uber-hipsters. we're talking studio 54 meets those club kids who used to go on jerry springer in the mid-nineties. playsuits and headdresses and face paint and all. they played, among other things, "that don't impress me much" by shania twain. and that don't impress me much. i missed the last bus home and so walked across the harbour bridge under the stars. i slept in on sunday morning.

bottom line- choreography? good. public drinking? i ain't too mad. messiness? well now, let's get it together.

funnily enough this is pretty much how i feel about britney spears as well.

happy mareh iraq!