Why not?
20 - 24 Nov, Ian
Since Sunday we've been in Melbourne. We were
met at the airport by Paula's good friend - our good friend - Natalie, and we're
staying with her and her husband Brett and son Rex. When we were last here Rex
was less than a year old; now he's four. Their house has grown up, too: last
time it was comfortable enough and now they've torn down the back and added a
very successful extension. What used to be a cottage for the workers who
attended to the needs of the rich people over the freeway in Toorak is now a
home with a distinctive character that any family could happily live in. And
it's so relaxing for us to be with Brett and Nat; it's the first time we've been
to the homes of people we know since April. They're the perfect hosts - giving
us the free run of their home and their cars and offering us all the attention
that we want, and no more.
Sunday night, when we arrived here, also marked the first time since we left the ranch in Argentina that we'd been able to relax in a really comfortable sofa. I slumped down for a couple of hours with a glass of something, chatting tiredly and watching brave Kylie in concert on TV. The next night Nat cooked up an excellent red curry that was augmented with some fine sea perch that Brett, being an Aussie male, threw on the barby.
The morning after we arrived we ran into the city to hit the shops. First, I replaced my camera. I should have shopped around and flushed out the best price but I didn't: I bought a new, dry version of the camera that I'd dumped in the sea last week at the first shop we went into. Actually, it's a new model and it has some better features; for example, it's black and not silver, and there's some other stuff of a more technical nature that's better too. The fancy Nikon SLR can wait till I'm older and able to look after my things.
Then we went to Borders. It was amazing: for the price of a week-old copy of Le Figaro in Rangiroa I could buy a book that I wanted to read. In fact, I was after four books and they had them all, and I also bought another that I'd never heard of before and that looked potentially interesting. I'll let you know about them as I read them. Before I get round to these I'm reading the autobiography of the couple who set up Lonely Planet. There's quite a lot of sections that run along the lines of I went back to the tiny town QQQ in south east asia - it used to be charming and sleepy but now it's overrun with tourists - which is a bit rich considering how many people these guys have directed there. But it's a fun read, being both good to stumble across accounts of places we've been (in the paragraphs I've just read they describe seeing the dolphins at Tiputa Pass) and also to get some local colour, since they were based in Melbourne, near where we are now.
In between shops we had a coffee at one of the thousand or so appealing cafes and found that they were also pumping out free wifi. And we got an excellent steak sandwich at a fraction of the price we'd pay for anything in Rangiroa. I went to the supermarket later in the day with Brett and found that there too there was a wide range of food I wanted to buy at good prices.
I have to ask myself why I wouldn't want to live here. (If I forgot to ask myself I'd always have Paula to ask for me - she's wanted to move down here for as long as we've known each other.) I can't think of anywhere as good to shop as Melbourne. There may be some things that you can get in New York and probably in London that you can't get here (Shure ear buds - Paula wanted some like mine) but the city centre is so pleasant and easy to navigate that it more than compensates. In the past I've written off Aus as a place where you can only buy airport fiction but that's manifestly not true now, if it ever was. There is as much of a cultural life as I'd need and there are excellent facilities of every kind. And, in contrast to London or New York, you can live near where you work without making crippling compromises of indebtedness and/or quality of life. I don't know how or why I continue to resist the logic. Maybe I'd miss people from home; but with the exception of five blood relatives I'm sure that no-one from England would have too much trouble dealing with their distress if we moved out. I'm a bit concerned that Nat feels compelled to educate Rex privately since this refutes my vision of Aus as a successful, meritocratic and egalitarian society: apparently they adopted Thatcherism here a few years ago, with the predictable consequence that their public schools are now dreadful. (There are groups of school boys walking around in flannel shorts that would drive kids in England or the US to kill their parents; and probably get a mitigated sentence. I presume they pay for the privilege.) Also I get a little worried by how far away Australians feel that the rest of the world is, and how isolated it makes them. But these aren't good enough reasons not to move here - it's just a flaw in me that stops me, a mineral weakness that I can't explain. If only I could remedy myself, Nat's now working as an upmarket recruitment agent (I haven't asked. Yet). There are investment banks based right in Melbourne too, although one that I worked with a few years ago was absurdly dysfunctional, but without being absurd on the epic scale that can (if you squint) generate the romance of being heroic, like another firm I know even better.
I have always liked the public swimming pools in Aus, particularly the outdoor 50 metre pools. When we were here last Heidi swam properly for the first time at a pool in a local leisure centre and I took the girls back there on Tuesday. They still have the flume slide and the wave machine to play in and now the girls can also swim in the 50 m lap pool, where we went in a slow lane and they were soon complaining about the pace of the other swimmers. I've always told them that they'll each get £100 when they can beat me over 50 metres - they're still a few years off but I'd like to think that they'll collect one day. They wanted to have a go on the high dive boards but the dive pool was closed off for coaching - the two girls who were pirouetting down into the pool both looked impressively expert. Personally, I find that even jumping (let alone diving) from the top boards pushes my ability to deal with vertigo almost to its limit and I was glad that we couldn't have a go.
On Tuesday evening Paula and I had our first meal out on our own together since we've been away. While the girls were cleaning up plates of chicken, mash and veg chez Nat, we had the special menu at The Flower Drum. Everyone here warned us of how expensive it is, so to get my head in the right place (which was hardly necessary) Paula reminded me of the ridiculous amounts that we've blown on meals at The Fat Duck and Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons (don't ask - I'd be too embarrassed to tell you; but they are both outstanding food venues). The Flower Drum was more "reasonable". And the meal was superb: each of the six pre-dessert courses was sensational, from the scallop dumplings to the best beef sezchuan. It was unquestionably the finest meal we've had so far this year, and, based upon this experience, one of the top ten restaurants we've been to. Michelle and Andres in Ecuador have recently won a prestigious eco-tourism award and we celebrated that - and our own excellent meal - with a bottle of Black Sheep cabernet sauvignon - "Produced by people who dare to be different". The table next to us was taken by a quartet from KPMG. There were two Bruce-type guys in rumpled shirts, a smiley Indian-looking guy and a well turned out blonde girl (you can say that here) wearing an immaculate white blouse. The difference in their demeanour was interesting. While the two Bruces picked up all of the food that could appropriately be held and confidently waved it around, the chick looked terrified of it. She would look around for a while, choose her moment, and then grab up her food, bolting down as much of it as she could in one go, looking all the time at her colleagues to make sure they weren't watching her, and then put it down again as quickly as she could. Whenever possible she'd hoover up as much she could with chopsticks to avoid the torment of finger-eating, but she wasn't too proficient with them. She didn't say much either, although she smiled a lot. I hope she found enjoyment in the fabulous food (they had the same as we did) despite her social issues.
You may recall that when we were in the States we were generally abused (by denial of treatment and punitive charges) when we sought dental attention for Heidi. We've been pinning our hopes on getting sorted here and our visit to the dentist was, in a way, very promising. First, we got seen. And the dentist was sympathetic (unlike the child-hater who saw Heidi in Maine). He diagnosed, credibly, that Zoe needed two fillings and Heidi needed two fillings and two extractions. He did the first of Zoe's fillings on the spot and we have appointments for the other treatments booked as we swing in and out of Melbourne through December. The dentist would have preferred to get Heidi into a hospital so she could be knocked out and have everything done in one hit, but that proved impossible to fit in with our committed travel plans. But a promising start and hopefully we should be tooth-happy when we leave Aus after Christmas.
While I'm too chicken-livered to move here, one guy who has made it over is the husband, Terry, of Nat's sister, Penny; he's originally from the States and now runs PR in Asia for Cisco. We've known Penny for many years, and Terry for quite a few and we visited them at their new home here the other evening. They are also effortlessly hospitable, and Penny has the attractive outrageousness of a younger daughter. They've moved to a very nice house in a posh part of town, just down the road from one of the owners of Mook/Stussy. Terry told me that houses here are usually sold by auction - they saw theirs for the first time on Thursday and were the legal owners by the same Saturday. You can see that this is a society where many things just work better. I should tell you that these nice houses aren't cheap here. While his commute is much better (10 minutes!!), their house costed no less than an equivalent property in the smart commuter districts around New York. You get a good view over to the city from their terrace, and the girls splashed around with Rex and their kids for over two hours in the pool. We had another lovely meal outdoors, and inevitably Terry did the Aussie-guy barby thing.
Today we did more errands. Heidi and I went back into the city to re-hit the shops. Thatcherism hasn't been so thoroughly implemented here as to screw up public transport as well as the schools: the trains and trams are convenient and clean and you wouldn't think of using the car to get into town. While we were having our sushi I was thinking about a friend from work who has been in Melbourne this week with her partner; it amuses me to think that after eight months away I haven't managed to hook up with someone who is beetling around the same town at the same time (the last time I could have got in touch before she left was when we were in Rangiroa and I had no comms). I'd like to see our tracks over the past few days on a Marauder's map, and to see how close we passed.
Here's a snap of us with Nat and Brett.
I'm not moving to Melbourne but for the life of me I can't tell you why. Tonight we catch the train to Adelaide. Ian
Sunday night, when we arrived here, also marked the first time since we left the ranch in Argentina that we'd been able to relax in a really comfortable sofa. I slumped down for a couple of hours with a glass of something, chatting tiredly and watching brave Kylie in concert on TV. The next night Nat cooked up an excellent red curry that was augmented with some fine sea perch that Brett, being an Aussie male, threw on the barby.
The morning after we arrived we ran into the city to hit the shops. First, I replaced my camera. I should have shopped around and flushed out the best price but I didn't: I bought a new, dry version of the camera that I'd dumped in the sea last week at the first shop we went into. Actually, it's a new model and it has some better features; for example, it's black and not silver, and there's some other stuff of a more technical nature that's better too. The fancy Nikon SLR can wait till I'm older and able to look after my things.
Then we went to Borders. It was amazing: for the price of a week-old copy of Le Figaro in Rangiroa I could buy a book that I wanted to read. In fact, I was after four books and they had them all, and I also bought another that I'd never heard of before and that looked potentially interesting. I'll let you know about them as I read them. Before I get round to these I'm reading the autobiography of the couple who set up Lonely Planet. There's quite a lot of sections that run along the lines of I went back to the tiny town QQQ in south east asia - it used to be charming and sleepy but now it's overrun with tourists - which is a bit rich considering how many people these guys have directed there. But it's a fun read, being both good to stumble across accounts of places we've been (in the paragraphs I've just read they describe seeing the dolphins at Tiputa Pass) and also to get some local colour, since they were based in Melbourne, near where we are now.
In between shops we had a coffee at one of the thousand or so appealing cafes and found that they were also pumping out free wifi. And we got an excellent steak sandwich at a fraction of the price we'd pay for anything in Rangiroa. I went to the supermarket later in the day with Brett and found that there too there was a wide range of food I wanted to buy at good prices.
I have to ask myself why I wouldn't want to live here. (If I forgot to ask myself I'd always have Paula to ask for me - she's wanted to move down here for as long as we've known each other.) I can't think of anywhere as good to shop as Melbourne. There may be some things that you can get in New York and probably in London that you can't get here (Shure ear buds - Paula wanted some like mine) but the city centre is so pleasant and easy to navigate that it more than compensates. In the past I've written off Aus as a place where you can only buy airport fiction but that's manifestly not true now, if it ever was. There is as much of a cultural life as I'd need and there are excellent facilities of every kind. And, in contrast to London or New York, you can live near where you work without making crippling compromises of indebtedness and/or quality of life. I don't know how or why I continue to resist the logic. Maybe I'd miss people from home; but with the exception of five blood relatives I'm sure that no-one from England would have too much trouble dealing with their distress if we moved out. I'm a bit concerned that Nat feels compelled to educate Rex privately since this refutes my vision of Aus as a successful, meritocratic and egalitarian society: apparently they adopted Thatcherism here a few years ago, with the predictable consequence that their public schools are now dreadful. (There are groups of school boys walking around in flannel shorts that would drive kids in England or the US to kill their parents; and probably get a mitigated sentence. I presume they pay for the privilege.) Also I get a little worried by how far away Australians feel that the rest of the world is, and how isolated it makes them. But these aren't good enough reasons not to move here - it's just a flaw in me that stops me, a mineral weakness that I can't explain. If only I could remedy myself, Nat's now working as an upmarket recruitment agent (I haven't asked. Yet). There are investment banks based right in Melbourne too, although one that I worked with a few years ago was absurdly dysfunctional, but without being absurd on the epic scale that can (if you squint) generate the romance of being heroic, like another firm I know even better.
I have always liked the public swimming pools in Aus, particularly the outdoor 50 metre pools. When we were here last Heidi swam properly for the first time at a pool in a local leisure centre and I took the girls back there on Tuesday. They still have the flume slide and the wave machine to play in and now the girls can also swim in the 50 m lap pool, where we went in a slow lane and they were soon complaining about the pace of the other swimmers. I've always told them that they'll each get £100 when they can beat me over 50 metres - they're still a few years off but I'd like to think that they'll collect one day. They wanted to have a go on the high dive boards but the dive pool was closed off for coaching - the two girls who were pirouetting down into the pool both looked impressively expert. Personally, I find that even jumping (let alone diving) from the top boards pushes my ability to deal with vertigo almost to its limit and I was glad that we couldn't have a go.
On Tuesday evening Paula and I had our first meal out on our own together since we've been away. While the girls were cleaning up plates of chicken, mash and veg chez Nat, we had the special menu at The Flower Drum. Everyone here warned us of how expensive it is, so to get my head in the right place (which was hardly necessary) Paula reminded me of the ridiculous amounts that we've blown on meals at The Fat Duck and Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons (don't ask - I'd be too embarrassed to tell you; but they are both outstanding food venues). The Flower Drum was more "reasonable". And the meal was superb: each of the six pre-dessert courses was sensational, from the scallop dumplings to the best beef sezchuan. It was unquestionably the finest meal we've had so far this year, and, based upon this experience, one of the top ten restaurants we've been to. Michelle and Andres in Ecuador have recently won a prestigious eco-tourism award and we celebrated that - and our own excellent meal - with a bottle of Black Sheep cabernet sauvignon - "Produced by people who dare to be different". The table next to us was taken by a quartet from KPMG. There were two Bruce-type guys in rumpled shirts, a smiley Indian-looking guy and a well turned out blonde girl (you can say that here) wearing an immaculate white blouse. The difference in their demeanour was interesting. While the two Bruces picked up all of the food that could appropriately be held and confidently waved it around, the chick looked terrified of it. She would look around for a while, choose her moment, and then grab up her food, bolting down as much of it as she could in one go, looking all the time at her colleagues to make sure they weren't watching her, and then put it down again as quickly as she could. Whenever possible she'd hoover up as much she could with chopsticks to avoid the torment of finger-eating, but she wasn't too proficient with them. She didn't say much either, although she smiled a lot. I hope she found enjoyment in the fabulous food (they had the same as we did) despite her social issues.
You may recall that when we were in the States we were generally abused (by denial of treatment and punitive charges) when we sought dental attention for Heidi. We've been pinning our hopes on getting sorted here and our visit to the dentist was, in a way, very promising. First, we got seen. And the dentist was sympathetic (unlike the child-hater who saw Heidi in Maine). He diagnosed, credibly, that Zoe needed two fillings and Heidi needed two fillings and two extractions. He did the first of Zoe's fillings on the spot and we have appointments for the other treatments booked as we swing in and out of Melbourne through December. The dentist would have preferred to get Heidi into a hospital so she could be knocked out and have everything done in one hit, but that proved impossible to fit in with our committed travel plans. But a promising start and hopefully we should be tooth-happy when we leave Aus after Christmas.
While I'm too chicken-livered to move here, one guy who has made it over is the husband, Terry, of Nat's sister, Penny; he's originally from the States and now runs PR in Asia for Cisco. We've known Penny for many years, and Terry for quite a few and we visited them at their new home here the other evening. They are also effortlessly hospitable, and Penny has the attractive outrageousness of a younger daughter. They've moved to a very nice house in a posh part of town, just down the road from one of the owners of Mook/Stussy. Terry told me that houses here are usually sold by auction - they saw theirs for the first time on Thursday and were the legal owners by the same Saturday. You can see that this is a society where many things just work better. I should tell you that these nice houses aren't cheap here. While his commute is much better (10 minutes!!), their house costed no less than an equivalent property in the smart commuter districts around New York. You get a good view over to the city from their terrace, and the girls splashed around with Rex and their kids for over two hours in the pool. We had another lovely meal outdoors, and inevitably Terry did the Aussie-guy barby thing.
Today we did more errands. Heidi and I went back into the city to re-hit the shops. Thatcherism hasn't been so thoroughly implemented here as to screw up public transport as well as the schools: the trains and trams are convenient and clean and you wouldn't think of using the car to get into town. While we were having our sushi I was thinking about a friend from work who has been in Melbourne this week with her partner; it amuses me to think that after eight months away I haven't managed to hook up with someone who is beetling around the same town at the same time (the last time I could have got in touch before she left was when we were in Rangiroa and I had no comms). I'd like to see our tracks over the past few days on a Marauder's map, and to see how close we passed.
Here's a snap of us with Nat and Brett.
I'm not moving to Melbourne but for the life of me I can't tell you why. Tonight we catch the train to Adelaide. Ian
Posted: Thu - November 24, 2005 at 05:39 PM
Quick Links
Links
Archives
XML/RSS Feed
Calendar
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
Categories
Comments powered by
Statistics
Total entries in this blog:
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Nov 24, 2005 06:25 PM
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Nov 24, 2005 06:25 PM